


Invisible Fears

by SaltyWriter



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 911 Operator Levi, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Artist Eren Yeager, Depression, Dissociation, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Violence, Drunk Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eren is a bit feminine, Erwin is a Psychiatrist, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I'm using Eren to vent, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, LIKE MAJOR ASF, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin) Has PTSD, Levi used to self harm, M/M, Minor Hange Zoë/Erwin Smith, Minor Mikasa Ackerman/Annie Leonhart, Minor Oluo Bozado/Petra Ral, Night Terrors, Panic Attacks, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex Trafficking, Sexual Abuse, Slow Romance, Smoking, always in my fics, beach, i assure u, levi has a really horrible past, major trigger warnings, there will be future smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:32:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 36,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyWriter/pseuds/SaltyWriter
Summary: Levi, a 5 year long 911 Operator, has had many calls that hit far too close to home. He's heard many things throughout his career, and sat through each and every one of them, no matter how horrific. Sometimes what he can do doesn't save anyone in the end, and sometimes it does - but the worst part has always been the lack of closure. He never really knows what happens to the people who call. It could be for the best, in some of those cases.Eren had been one call. It was brief, and there was little time to think or ask questions. Levi is left completely unknowing of what happened to the weeping boy, until a close friend suggests they move in together for safety purposes.He didn't expect to fall in love with him.[Name is a really crappy excuse of a placeholder]





	1. Operator Irony

**Author's Note:**

> Oii! I've been interested in the dispatcher career for a while now (ever since I had to do a report on it not that long ago for MSA), so I thought I'd write something on it! 
> 
> If there's something wrong, please tell me! (especially about the whole operator ordeal) If there's something I can improve on (and trust me honey there's a fuckton I can improve on), feel free to suggest to me what I should look into fixing. I love feedback, in fact, it is second to only air. I consume it like fucking food. 
> 
> If this does well, I'll definitely be writing more for it. Later, there will be sexual themes, angst, and detailed descriptions of situations some may find uncomfortable. I'll be sure to put warnings ahead of each chapter, and if I forget, please be sure to tell me!!♥
> 
> (For anyone of sexual/physical/emotional abuse, there are many, many triggers in this series, and I can't put this warning at the beginning of each chapter for that. If you are easily triggered by these kinds of things, keep in mind that it is mentioned very often, and I wouldn't suggest reading this. Take care of yourself, for you are a beautiful are one-of-a-kind person!♥♥♥)

It’s only been hour six, and I’m permanently exhausted. Scratch that, I’m always a little exhausted.

It hasn’t been a long day, and it hasn’t been too hectic – Petra, just a few feet away from me, is tapping lightly at her keyboard, which is heaven to me. Usually she’s guzzling coffee and cursing at full-pitch for the entire damn office to hear. Today, she’s slumped over the desk, obviously just as bored and tired as I am.

Occasionally I’ll get a good call, one of those _hey, man I can’t feel my legs_ calls, but a good portion of them are _someone stole my parking spot_ calls. And the infamous butt dial.

I mean, it’s a good Tuesday evening, and nothing much ever happens on Tuesdays. On Fridays and Saturdays, however, people are getting drunk off their asses, and people do stupid shit when they can’t think straight. I’ve sucked up my own fair share of coffee, just so I can stay awake. Petra gives me the evil glare sometimes, but I know she doesn’t mean anything bad with it. She’s just bitter that I’m taking the share of coffee she usually drinks when she’s on a role.

Oluo is off somewhere to my right, his feet up on the desk and his laptop positioned across – you guessed it – his lap. Even from here he looks obnoxious. Meanwhile, the most I’m doing is trying not to throw a cup at someone. Usually, I’m not so upstrung, but that has to do with the fact I’m usually too busy to be upstrung. As a 911 operator, I’m not _allowed_ to be upstrung. Now I have the down time to do exactly what my career begs me not to do. Petra leans back in her chair, making a high-pitched yawn.

“Levi, how much coffee is left?”

“Not enough for the both of us, that’s for damn sure,” I respond dully. She rolls her eyes, pushing her chair back a little to wriggle her feet. I swat my mic down from my face, and spin in my chair, stretching out my legs. “When’s your break again?”

“I’m probably gonna skip it. I don’t trust the quiet,” Petra says. We here at the PSAP usually don’t usually accept quiet, we even have a fear of the word. Usually, we don’t say it out loud. It’s practically begging for the lines to go crazy. Her lips draw to the side, tilting her head back and stretching her neck.

“You’re gonna jinx us,” Oluo calls from just behind me. He’s swirled back around to his monitors, apparently involved in something I could care less about. “You know how much shit that word gets us into,”

“Yeah, but it’s just too much! Not used to being off a line for longer than two minutes.” Petra scoots back up in her rolling chair, popping her knuckles. Only she’d think that way. Most of us are probably pretty grateful no one is getting chopped up or molested somewhere in our county. I take the paper cup again, and down a good few more gulps of pure caffeine.

Suddenly Petra jolts up, and clicks her mic. She turns back around in her seat, already speaking with what I can assume is another caller. She’s probably got something minuscule, based off the impassiveness on her face.

That just leaves me. Of course, Eld is on break, Gunther is on the other side of the office on a call, and Mike is probably inhaling half the damn office. Mike likely isn’t literally doing that, but he has a problem of sniffing things before using them. It's some sort of weird nervous tick he developed over the years.

I don’t question it. It’s probably a result of that PTSD we operators are all supposedly automatically victims of the moment we start working here.

Of course, this job is usually fast paced and pretty painful to deal with, but for now, I’ll like to joke about it. Just to relieve any sort of stress I could realize I really do have in a later date.

Just then, I get a call. Instinctively, I pick up instantly, already looking into addresses just in case. The cell tower responds far slower than usual, and when I get a response there's a likeliness it's not even the right place. It's showing somewhere in the middle of a forest.

“911, where’s your emergency?”

Those words become engraved in you pretty quickly, and soon you’re thinking it when you’re showering, when you’re eating, even when you’re sleeping. It’s funny, because I’ve had past girlfriends who complained about me talking in my sleep.

“H-Hello- this… um…” Ah, one of those callers. The really quiet ones get on my nerves. It seems to be a he, but his voice is timid and high. There’s a lilt of fear in it, based purely off of the breathlessness.

“Yes, hello?” I urge him.

“Um, so… my dad.” He breaks off, and it seems almost indefinitely. I inhale deeply, and question if I should already be dispatching based off of just that one word. Either his dad is dead, trapped somewhere, or he’s threatening to harm someone. If it's the last, I might as well just pass this to Petra as quickly as possible. I should know better than to take these kinds of calls, they're much more stressful to me.

“Yes, can you give me your location?” What's happening right now is not important, but his location is. I can't help him otherwise. It’s never really important the when or why, more of the where. If I don’t at least know where he is, then it’ll be a pain trying to collect information off of the three cell towers within his area.

He gives me the address, albeit shakily and with a lot of duress.

“Alright… can you tell me what your emergency is?”

“My dad—“ He chokes a little on the word, “He’s got a kn… knife.”

Oh, fuck. Well, okay. I’m beginning to dispatch, at this point. I’m not panicking, obviously, just a little more uneasy than I usually am. It’s not uncommon to get these kinds of calls, but his tone alone rubs off. I’m known for being very stoic about the really bloody situations, but the family abuse things get to me without my noticing. Petra will often begin crying silently if it’s bad enough, and Oluo is always the one who goes to sit beside her, holding her tight. She deserves him, no matter how annoying he is.

“Okay, can you hide somewhere? Anywhere you-“

“No! I don’t have anywhere,” his nearly quiet, shy tone melts away with a burst of terror, and maybe even frustration. That’s not uncommon either.

“Don’t worry. There’s police on the way. Can you stay on the line with me?” Petra looks up from her workspace, eyes slightly clouded and curious. Oluo leans back, looking around the board that stays between us. It doesn’t stop us from looking though.

“I-I…” he hiccups ,“Yes, I c-can. Please hurry.”

I sigh softly, making sure to tilt the mic away so I can. Petra looks worried, like she always does. In our small town, these kinds of things are the worst of the worst. We live in an area where the worst of the common things are equipment injuries and suicides.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Er…” There’s not much I can do when I start hearing a banging. My throat tightens, but I promptly will it away. It’s a hard thing to do, but it’s the best I have. My will is my savior in this kind of situation. The boy, now labeled as _Er_ in my head, makes a disgusting sob into the phone. Petra seems to hear a little of it, because her face crumples beneath her mask. She looks a little pained to have to turn away and answer another call. Oluo's face is serious, an oddly stony contrast to his comical lip-curled expression.

“H-He’s at the—“ a hiccup, once again, “the door. He’s gonna kill me,” his voice is making my own heart pound. I need to do everything I can, but what is there, aside from what I've already done?

“No, he’s not. There’s police on the way.”

“Fuck your police!” He practically wails, and somewhere in the kid’s room there’s a furious screech from beyond a door. There it goes, that heart wrench I get when I know I’m just lying to someone. Hopefully, the police will get there before the door comes down.

“Calm down, Er.”

“E-Ere… Eren…” he whimpers. I realize it’s his name, after a second or two, and not his dad’s. I inhale again, just so, trying to find a calm place. Domestic abuse calls are sometimes the most hurtful ones, for me. It causes headaches, because it’s family and sometimes people are calling in abuse cases that aren’t really even abuse, but it also causes old memories to be dug up, like corpses I’d sworn I’d burned a long, long time ago. I listen to the soft, choking whispers of Eren’s breath, his small sobs. They’re each more painful than the last, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid had asthma.

“Listen, is your dad drunk or high?”

“Drunk,”

Ah. I quickly switch over to relay this information to a police officer, and return to Eren. There’s an ambulance on the way, too, but I wouldn’t want to tell that to Eren. If I did, he’d probably just get worried I’d assumed he would be hurt, and sadly, he wouldn’t be wrong. More banging, and glass shatters in my ears. I hear Eren make another high-pitched screech, followed by an incessant ‘please, please, please’.

It becomes a repetitive word in my ears. His voice is scratchy and terrified, like a breath used to call one last time for help. I wish I could help more, but the most I can do is talk with him.

“Eren, how old are you?”

“N-Nineteen.” Huh. He’s nineteen and living with his father? Again, I relay this information to an officer, one of the few on their way. Eren’s home appears to be pretty far off from many stations. Which explains why the cell towers took a little longer than usual to give me any idea of where he was.

“So you’re not in highschool anymore? Isn’t that just fucking awesome?” I say it so boredly, Eren can’t help but laugh. It’s a wrecked one, though, sounding like an absolute mess of tears and muffled snivels.

“A-Ahha. Ha. Y-Yeah. Awesome.” Something tells me he’s being sarcastic.

“How long has it been this way, Eren?”

I can nearly feel him grow just a little calmer. I hear a bed shift, sheets crumpling up beneath a body. He must be in his room, then?

“Since… m-mom died. Three years ago.”

Fuck, that’s sad too. Goddamn it. I tilt my head back against the seat. I’m wasting a lot of time in this situation, but I can’t just leave the call. Besides, Oluo and Petra can handle it fairly well, from what I can tell. Petra appears to be tearing up.

“Yeah. Has your dad calmed down a little?” I don’t hear banging anymore, but there’s still profanity and screaming. He may have ran out of things to throw, or he’s just stalking about outside Eren’s door. That’d seem reasonable.

“He’ll only be calm for a little while.”

“What started this?”

He sniffles. He doesn’t answer, because soon there’s a crash, and the signal is gone. I’m left with uncertainty, a long unending beep, and the pained expression I get from Petra when she knows how shitfaced I’ll get after tonight. I sigh, and slap my head down against the desk. The monitors shake a little from the impact.

“Levi, get back to work,” Oluo uses the line I had used on him once, and attempts to do it in my special tone. If I could throw my cold coffee at him, I damn well would.

I attempt to call back, but all I get is voicemail. It’s excruciating and repetitive, but eventually I get word from an officer that they’re on scene, and I have to – reluctantly – let go.

 

 

 

 

After work, I was very much right about the whole shit-faced thing. The rest of the shift, I got a call or two that was noteworthy – someone was experiencing a stroke, a little girl’s mother was trapped with her legs underneath a few hundred pounds of a fallen refrigerator.

I got off of work as quickly as I could, immediately attacked by Petra, who knew exactly what was going on inside my head. She pulled me from the door, and stood me still right before her, eyes locked on mine.

“Levi, that kid is fine, okay?”

I roll my eyes. You’re not supposed to get personal in this line of work, but when the situation is so painfully close to yours when you were younger, you get _pretty_ _fucking_ _personal_. I would shrug her off, but she’s mama bear, and mama bear doesn’t take no for an answer.

“Yeah, yeah. Probably just fine.” I say. Her bottom lip hooks on her teeth, thoughtful and calculating as she looks up at me. Finally, she lets go of my arms, and steps back.

For all I know, she’s very much wrong, and the kid got stabbed a good fifty times and bled out on the scene.

I’ve been told before that the worst part about being a 911 dispatcher is the fact you never really get any kind of closure. You question the entire time if you ever really did anything for that person, or if they’re dead, or if they’re still in pain. You question if you got the wrong address, and in the end it never mattered. I wish it wasn’t like that, but either way you need to move on pretty quickly and stop being so involved in the whole scheme of things. _If_ that person is dead, it was never your fault.

At least, that’s what I tell myself every day. It’s a pain in the ass, but eventually you start to become used to that pin in your backside. You even begin to associate it with your ass.

But hey, that’s just bland thinking, if you ask me. Petra lets me go after that, and I drive home, ten feet deep in that three-day despair that last exactly how long it’s named for. My team made up the name after Oluo had a call from a five year old girl weeping into the phone as her little brother died slowly from blood loss after he got caught in a cattle fence. I still remember the look on Oluo’s face – that was his first really bad call. Now, he’s had nearly fifty of them.

He looked a little broken, with wide eyes and dried tears. He didn’t talk about it with Petra like most of us do.

Petra’s first three-day despair was a father calling after killing his three-year-old daughter and pregnant wife. Gunther’s: a boy crying about his ex-girlfriend before he shot himself. Eld’s – we’ve never really heard about Eld’s, but he’s been here the longest, anyways. He knows what a three-day despair feels like more than any of us, I’m sure.

Truthfully, we don’t experience these kinds of things daily. Usually they’re a month occurrence. But when they do happen, we’re all a little torn up. I heard somewhere before that we could always request to have a psychiatrist come and see all of us at once, but we always ignored the idea. It didn’t seem that important, to me, and we could always wipe it off within three days.

Hence, the name.

It’s out own mantra, as 911 Operators. We learn to accept that we did what we could, and we can never change it.

I get home, and as everyone had already expected, I get shitfaced.

Usually we do it in a team, but I’m not up for it tonight. It’s damn near twelve at midnight, and I’m already on the couch, one bottle downed and onto my next. In moments like these, I really get the chance to think about what happened.

Eren, nineteen years old, had an abusive father. His abusive father had attempted to harm him in some way today, and I was the person who had to find out how to help him. One way or the other, I tried. It may have been the most I could do, and maybe I seemed like it didn’t affect me, but to an extent it did affect me. It affected me so bad that now, here I am, drinking myself silly. I haven’t done that since my fourth three-day despair happened, and that was a long time ago.

I’ve listened to children scream, babies cry, and grown ass men weep as they try to decide if they’ll pull the trigger on themselves, and none have really been that harsh on me. I’ve been here as long as Oluo, and I’ve only had 10 of those damn three-day despairs. Mine aren’t even that long.

The light above my couch swirls, circling me in silence, calculating when it should jump at me. My fingers tighten around the bottle, and I groan a little.

Shit, these things are so very complicated. I wanted this job ‘cause I wanted to fix people, save lives and help problems resolve themselves. But in the end, I created one new problem, and that problem was me. It’s ironic, but irony can always be a little true.

I let my eyes flutter shut, listening to the hum of my apartment. The air conditioner purrs, and my actual cat does too. He curls up on my stomach, staring at me intently with each gulp. My arm hangs off the couch, alongside his tail.

“It’s okay, Captain.” I say. He drops his head, resting it on me, eyes still locked with mine, bleary and reddened.

It may have been an answer, but he mews softly. I can almost hear him say to me, _liar. You’re a liar, Levi._

Maybe I am a liar. I told a boy today he’d live, but maybe he didn’t. I lift the bottle and down some more, burning my throat like it’s meant to, just like how I want it to. If it burns, maybe that means I’m punishing myself, and I won’t fuck up next time. Did I even fuck up?

For a moment, I contemplate the fact that, here I am, getting drunk off my ass, while somewhere in the world kids are getting beat by men and women just as fucked as I am.

Oh, the operator irony.


	2. Jello Hangover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to make a third chapter quicker than usual because this one feels super, super short! I'm sorry 3
> 
>  
> 
> Ahhh I didn't expect people to like this so I'm super happy ! Thanks to everyone that left kudos, I'll do what I can to write to your expectations!~~
> 
> (I didn't check for errors, but I will tomorrow. I wanted to throw this out here really quick so no one would think I was holding off)

Obviously I didn’t sleep to well, and adding on to that, I woke up with a headache twice the size of Erwin. If you know Erwin, that is a fucking _lot,_ if you include the mass of his eyebrows. To make matters worse, I woke up on the floor in the middle of my apartment, the remnants of alcohol buzzing at the base of my skull and my cat’s face directly over mine.

He sits at the edge of the couch, leaned over to peer down at me. Like I’m some sort of pest. Truthfully, maybe I _am_ a pest, and he’s only just now realizing it. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, all things considered. Only a pest would drink poison, if it smelled good enough. Captain purrs, nails sinking into the couch and tail swaying behind him. If it wasn’t for how content he appeared, I’d assume he was preparing to pounce on my face with how close he was.

My eyes roll back, a gross groan coming from deep in my throat. I sound and _feel_ like death, today.

“Fuck,” I gasp. Captain hops down from the couch beside me, nestling himself nearby, paws tucked beneath his puffed chest and tail curled across the carpet. Everything is just a little blurry, like it usually is after nights like the one before . If I could just wipe away the headache, I totally would. Thankfully I don’t have a weak stomach, and most of my hangovers are purely headaches and sickness. If it were any different, I’d probably stop drinking.

I guess that’s just what humans are programmed to do – if the fire burns, don’t touch it, right? Humans are stupid, and sometimes we touch the fire anyways. So we can feel something new for once, and sometimes so we can feel the same thing forever.

I guess that’s just a matter of opinion.

Why am I laying on the floor contemplating existence? Is there really any point to that, when I could be at work saving lives?

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck!

I practically snap up, causing my brain to tilt and spin, lacking all sorts of gravity. I shouldn’t have moved so fucking fast - what am I thinking?

But what if that kid calls back?

Who the fuck am I kidding, he didn’t live. His dad probably broke down the door and bludgeoned him to death with a vase, or his bare hands. I don’t know why I’m trying to make it sound comical in my head – maybe that’s just my way of coping, and if it is, maybe I shouldn’t be an operator if I’m that sick in the head.

Another bad part of being a 911 Operator: questioning your ever fragile sanity on a day to day basis. Wondering if you’re really meant for the job you’ve worked to get most of your life.

“Morning, Levi.” I nearly fling myself off the floor when a voice rings out in my apartment. I don’t know from where, because the headache is telling me it’s from every direction, and goddamn does it hurt. Instead, I shift uncomfortably, managing to roll onto my stomach and jam my elbows into the carpet, bringing myself up on my knees.

A familiar smell hits me from every side when a body crouches beside me, and a cup is presented, set on the carpet just beside my hand.

“Petra told me you’d probably get drunk off your ass, and fuck was she right,” Hange chuckles. She nudges the cup a little closer to me, the warm caress of tea brushing against my every sense. I should want it like I usually do, but right now it makes me sick to my stomach. “Don’t worry about work, by the way. I know it’ll hit you in a bit, but you need a nap or two today.”

I sit back on my ass, tilting my head back a little. I’m sweating some, probably from it being ass-melting hot. Hange appears to be fine, though, which worries me. Maybe I’m suffering from a fever, but it wouldn’t be uncommon. She sighs, peering down at the cup of what smells like Chamomile tea. Hange should know better – I won’t drink that if I’m sick. Her lips pull to the side, head cocking faintly.

“Mind telling me what you got so drunk over? Petra told me you’re having one of those three-day despairs you’re all so scared of.” She wouldn’t know the pain – Hange is a police officer, she doesn’t have to deal with the blunt of that kind of stuff. I know she has her own kind of pains, like being in the heat of fire and watching some of the most horrific things, but they have the _power_ _to stop it_. I’ve sat and listened to the sounds of a woman being raped, stupid enough to hope that they’d get there quick enough.

That was also one of my three-day despairs.

“Some kid.”

Hange perks up instantly. “Oh? I think I heard about that from Erwin! He was on that kid, yeah? I heard he got to a hospital-“

My hand flashes out, grabbing the officer by her crisp collar and yanking her down hard. Her arms wheel furiously, before she finally manages to grip my shoulders.

“He’s okay?” Her eyebrows knit together, lowered in confusion.

“Yeah. That Eren Jaeger case?”

My throat closes in on itself, a trickle of warmth falling down my spine like heated honey. “H-He… he’s okay.”

Worry is etched into the younger’s eyes, but slowly realization drowns it out. I can almost see the _oh_ in her face. “Is this the kid you were so worried about, Levi?”

I let go of her at last, leaning back on my palms and tilt my head back, breathing in sweet relief. He could have died, and he’s what – nineteen? He’s got so many years ahead of him. He should have never had to fear for his life. A part of me is pissed that I had to find out for myself through mistake that he was alive, but an even bigger part just feels relief.

“Yeah.”

She seems to get it, because she reaches out to slip her arm beneath mine. “Let’s go get you a shower. You smell like booze.” I would struggle, but she’s right – I hate smelling bad, which explains the constant supply of bleach and soap all around the house. There’s a bottle of germex on every desk in the entire office thanks to me.

So I happily let her lift me up, not uttering a single word as she drags me to the bathroom.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if she tried to bathe me herself, but her husband would kick her in the face if she did. It wouldn’t be a matter of sexuality, not to her – she isn’t interested in bodies, being she’s purely asexual, but Erwin is a dickwad and doesn’t like Hange being so shameless.

“If you put your hand anywhere near my dick I’m gonna fucking chop it off,”

She bursts into an obnoxious laugh.

 

 

 

After a good shower, and at least ten pounds of soap, I dry myself off and tug on something that, for once, isn’t my uniform. I’m unused to wearing anything but sweatpants to sleep and my uniform every day. I don’t really leave the house anymore, being I’m as socially fucked as Hitler, and instead deal with Petra force-buying groceries. The worst part is, she uses my money to buy the fruitiest shit she can find.

Hange seems to notice this. I find her in the kitchen, devouring strawberry jello cups. I’m not that annoyed with it, because I don’t eat much anymore. If I eat anything, it’s chinese takeout. Not healthy, but very much convenient. People like me live for convenient, now.

“Ah, God! Petra knows what to get, doesn’t she?” I roll my eyes as she slaps the cup down, comically patting her belly. It’s not like she has much to pat. She looks me up and down, completely oblivious to just how unacceptable it is. “Levi, you really need to start dating.”

Yeah, right. Why would I date anyone? Dating is petty, and never turns out how anyone wants it to, not unless it’s on fairy tales. I don’t understand why everyone is so obsessed with the idea of being attached to someone. I quite like being independent.

Besides, I’m nearly 35 – I know older people can get married and all and have perfectly fine relationships, but I’m already pretty exhausted as it is. I’m not stable enough to – gah – love someone. I don’t even appear to consider the idea, slipping right by it and grabbing a bottle of water to punctuate just how little of a shit I give. I lean against the counter and down it right in front of her.

“Ah, don’t be that way, Levi! You need a princess in your life.”

“I don’t date, Hange.”

“That’s what I said, and now I have Erwin.”

I roll my eyes. She uses their marriage as an excuse to everything. They’re love sick, blinded by it if you will, and after a while it starts to get tiring to watch. At first everyone was falling over each other to wail about children, but the marriage has existed for three years now and a baby hasn’t popped out.

It annoys me that so many people are only interested in marriages because they know kids will come of it. Personally, I’ll never want kids. They’re gross, snotty, all sorts of _bacteria._

“Yeah, yeah. Well, ever considered some people just don’t like other people?” I say. The plastic bottle crunches under my fingers when I finish practically inhaling it. I refill it at the faucet while Hange watches intently, analyzing my words. Sometimes I swear she just wants to argue with me over stupid shit.

“Yes, I know you could be aromantic and all, but have you even considered it? Someone there, just for you, and you-“

“Hange, I don’t want anyone.” Her lips purse. I’ve always hated that look, like some sort of baby face she makes at me. I roll my eyes, once again, in pure exasperation. “It’s just… I’ve never thought about it because it just isn’t… attractive to me. I’ve never found anyone interesting like that.” I hate trying to explain myself to her. I sound like a small child when I do. She stares me down the entire time, too, which is just as frustrating.

She sets her hands down flat against the marble, splaying her manicured fingers out in pale fans. “Alright, then. I’ll stop bothering you over it. But I’m going to make you date someone some day,”

“Yeah, yeah, four-eyes.” She grins with the nickname, seemingly enjoying that I’ve come back from the grave enough to insult her.

I change my mind about the jello cup and grab my own. It’s red and goopy, a little disturbing to look at if I do it from the right angle. It looks like frozen blood, which should be a worrying description to make. At this point, it doesn’t bother me anymore.

I take a bite, and immediately hate the texture. Why would anyone want this in their mouth? Gross. I set the cup down, prompting Hange to lean over and snatch it up, slurping it down like some sort of psychopath.

“Hey… have you thought about going to see him?”

I perk up, disgustingly enough, peering at her like she’s grown five heads at once.

“The fuck? You think they’ll let me just walk in there and see him?”

“Yeah.” I choke. Ah, fuck. Was I supposed to know that? I set the bottle down, shocked. “I mean, no, you’re not _supposed to,_ but I can get you there really quick. I have connections,” the angel – yes, Hanji is an angel – winks at me. Suddenly I don’t hate her as much as I did a few minutes ago. And by hate, I mean _I’m okay with this one not burning in Hell._ She crosses her fingers, resting her chin on her hands.

Before I respond, I shove my excitement into a hole and revert back to a bland expression. I can’t let her think I want to go anywhere with the kid – she’s the type to do that, jump to conclusions like she’s in some sort of conclusion obstacle course. “So you’ll get me in to see him?”

She bobs her head once, shifting her glasses on her nose and smiling a brilliant smile.

“Yep, but only if I get another jello cup. That’s some good shit,”


	3. Brand of Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO! I’m back! Crazy right? So, I feel really bad about leaving everyone hanging, but I’d like to say that I’m hella sorry for disappearing. Legal issues, and with it, a lot of family problems. I’m actually in the process of going into Independent Living, because it’s been determined there’s no home I can really stay in.  
> So, I feel a little like Eren does now! Lovely.  
> Anyways, I’m a little rusty, and I’ve been less creative as of late, so forgive me if I seem monotonous! I’m doing what I can.  
> Thanks to those who commented - you really made my day when I returned from the treatment shelter, and I’m glad to be somewhere where I can focus on writing and the good things, like independence.  
> Anyways, enjoy the read <3

We don’t go right away – Hange takes her sweet time eating a third jello cup, savoring each bite like it’s sex – I grimace every time she smacks, myself nearly popping her in the side of the head just for the sounds alone. She may be asexual, but she’s severely suggestive, and I’ve always hated her for the awkwardness.

It’s nearly 3 in the afternoon when grabs her jacket from the wrack and tells me to ‘vamonose’, wriggling to fit her arms into the leather sleeves. It feels wrong to show up at an abuse victim’s hospital room so randomly, especially after such a traumatic event, but I’m walking social failure, so I can always use that as an excuse. It’s not like I’m going to ask him a million questions about everything, which I’m sure is what Hange is going to do.

Of course, it’s her job – my job was finished with him long ago, long before he got to the hospital. She still has to do intake-type-shit, such as figuring out how this all started and what kind of charges can be put to his father.

I want him to spend his entire life in prison.

Maybe that’s cruel, but to me, it’s realistic. Terrorizing anyone, 19 or not, deserves all Hell to pay. He should learn what it feels like in prison.

We hop in her car – her cop car, the stupid show off. She’s off duty, and she’s still driving around in the thing. She has her own car back at the PD center, but it seems like she loves the attention she gets for it. People probably slow down the moment she turns the corner onto the street. My neighbor, the one right above me, watches with blind eyes while I pull the door closed.

I had answered a call once for her – she’d gone blind, and was terrified for herself. She’d had a hard time pressing in the buttons, but those numbers are imprinted in every kid’s head since they were barely able to understand numbers at all.

The hospital is nearly fifteen minutes away, in the city, but I deal with her incessant chattering the whole way. She’d been prone to talking about what goes on in her job all the time. A drug deal, a rape case, a murder just downtown. That’s _only_ what’s downtown – you could imagine what it’s like in the bad part of the city.

Thank God I don’t answer calls for them. I’d be going insane, I’m sure – I can barely stand all the calls in my own region. I’m not religious, but I pray for those dispatchers sometimes. I can’t imagine being in any situation aside from my own, but it still sounds sucky.

At the hospital, she shows her badge, and we’re let in easy. In the waiting room, I feel jittery and disgusting. So many sick people in one place. I haven’t gotten sick, aside from a hangover, in years, partly due to my cleaning habits. I hate being sick in the first place, so I simply stay away from dirty places. To me, the hospital waiting room is a dirty place. In fact, any kind of waiting room is a dirty place. Imagine – everyone in one area at once, all capable of being infected with all sorts of hideous diseases.

I shudder when I even think of it.  


 

 

 

 

We’re not even in there long at all – just long enough for Hange to wave her police badge in an older man’s face, and be let in, but I still feel like things are crawling on my skin, surrounded by all these ruddy-faced men and tired women.

Inside, the hallways are much better. It smells exactly like what all hospitals smell like, potent and strong, like medicines. It calms me, a little. Bleach. It’s like bleach, and bleach wipes away impurities. What could be bad about bleach?

Hange feels my anxiety. I’m not in public spaces often, but I keep straight faces perfectly. The only people who ever know I’m feeling vulnerable is the people who’ve seen me at the office. There, I get along fine. Here, I’m different. Social anxiety is worth Hell, and someone gave it to me. Someone I never want to hear about again.

Room 235, 236, 237. We’re looking for room 240.

It turns out three other rooms are in a cove, just off the nurse’s station, where the smell is stronger and more intense. It burns my nose, but I ignore it, like I did school. It comes naturally.

Hange knocks on the door. I know from experience that doctors never knock on doors – they waltz in, naked or not, because it’s not like it’s anything they haven’t seen before. I hate doctors, sometimes. No answer comes, though – and she pushes the silver handle down, using her shoulder to open the heavy wood door.

“Hello?” She peeks in, her glasses bumping against the door’s edge. This time, a small shuffle comes from inside, from the bed, and a voice follows.

“Yes?”

I know that voice, and I may have etched it into my head in the five minutes we were on a call.

She steps in fully, pulling me along with her. I feel bad, standing her at a door like a creep, but Hange closes it behind me. I forget to.

“I’m Hange Zoe, an officer from the Police Department. And you’re Eren Jaeger, right?” Her voice is soft and sweet, a contrast from her usually high and maddening tone. She talks like a psycho, sometimes too fast, but now it’s slow and honey-like. A mother’s voice. My throat tightens, standing here, in the hospital room of what I’m assuming is a broken boy.

But he isn’t. He doesn’t look like it, anyways. There’s a bruise on his left cheek, just below his eye, but that’s all I see. I know there’s much more to it, but it’s fascinating, knowing he was likely hurt far more than that, and yet he looks so normal.

It takes someone else, like him, to see how really sad he looks. Maybe his friends look at him like he may be perfectly fine, but I know a little of what he does, and I can see it better than any of them.

“I don’t know where he is. Stop asking,” he says. His voice is raspy, just like it was on the phone. Only now, it’s sleepy, too, no longer filled with that adrenaline I know, too.

I peek at Hange out of the corner of my eye, catching her lips curling in dissatisfaction.

The boy shifts uncomfortably – Eren – and only now am I really looking at him, and not at his expressions and bruises. He’s a fairly tall and thin boy, wild brunette hair like a fan over his head. Obviously sleeping on it. I would be, too, after something like that. I don’t think anyone would care what they look like. His eyes, however, are something I can’t pull my gaze away. He’s not even looking directly at me, but at Hange, and they’re still bright.

Green. Like emerald. How cliché is that? How many books have I read where some old dude describes some young girl’s eyes as either oceans or jewels? Many. Too many, for someone who’s never dated. His skin is a contrast to his eyes, though. I come to the conclusion that he mustn’t be fully American, considering his name and the way he talks, his skin tone included.

“I’m not here to ask where he is, actually. I’m here to introduce you to the man who saved your life,” Hange grins lightly, too light. I would gag, but I can’t. Too many police officers try to act like they care. Of course, Hange cares, but some don’t – the ones involved in my case certainly didn’t. She tilts her head to me, brunette locks of hair bouncing with the movement. I look away awkwardly. The boy’s eyes, for the first time, are on me.

Eren Jaeger. Abuse victim. Levi Ackerman. Abuse victim and dispatcher.

“Oh,” _Oh_? I can’t help but snort, hearing him say something like it’s all a trivial matter, like he didn’t just almost die. Maybe I’m being bitter, but I feel like he should be crying, screaming, something – that’s what I was doing. Maybe he’s just a strong kid, and I wasn’t. That’s what it always was. “I never heard your name.”

“Levi.”

He looks down, like he’s ashamed.

“I was the one who picked up your call, yesterday. I wanted to know what happened to you,” I say, stupidly. Of course – why else would I want to be here? To ask for a tip? “I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Not… yet.”

It comes from Hange’s mouth, not his, and I have to turn my gaze back to the taller woman. Her brows are pulled together, appearing concerned in her own right. “His father escaped. The PD is still looking for him – they think he’s already in a different state.”

I look to Eren for confirmation, and I get one. He looks away from me again – that same, pitiful shame. If his father is still out there, who’s to say the asshole won’t turn around and come to finish the job? Eren’s the only one who may have any intel at all as to where the man went; if we can’t find him, he could hurt someone again.

“And Eren is 19 – a legal adult. He was in his father’s custody before, as his mother wasn’t medically fit to care for him-“

“They divorced?” I stop her midsentence. It seems like he may have been harmful to the wife, too.

“She was disabled, and right after, she divorced him. A no-fault divorce. An accident made it to where she couldn’t walk, but we’re unsure of what the accident was. Eren claims he did it – the father, and the autopsy mostly showed evidence that he may have. She overdosed three years ago, a week after the divorce,” Hange explains. My throat does the whole tightening thing. I hate how much it does that. I feel a little light headed, being in the center of all of this, so I move to a chair, settling into it. I sit with my head in my hands, listening silently.

“Isn’t this all classified or something?”

“I’ve already broken one rule. What’ve I got to lose?”

“Your job,” I snap back.

Eren moves a little in the bed, loud enough for me to hear the sheets rubbing against eachother. I sit up to watch him swing his legs over the bed and onto the floor. He’s in a hospital gown, long and white. I see more on his legs. The socks cover the edge of the bruise, but the rest is purplish and ugly, growing up past his calf. I sigh, loud enough for Hange to sigh back mockingly.

“I’m going to find out where this man is, but first, we have to get Eren somewhere safe. He can’t go back to his father’s house – bad memories and trauma. We’re avoiding the idea of putting him in state care, but it may be the last idea. Group homes open to 16 through 21 are welcoming to all situations, so-“

“A _group home?_ No, no. I have somewhere for him to go.”

His an adult, right? He doesn’t need any kind of signature, aside from maybe the court knowing where he’s positioned, just for safety. So, then, what’s the problem? I have an apartment, and a bed, and a fold-out couch, everything he’d need. I’m not opposed to having a roommate for a while, and beside that, I won’t ask for payment. And I know self-defense.

Hange raises a brow – but she knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“You mean… with you?”

I nod once. She doesn’t even laugh, but her face scrunches, thinking. “He _is_ 19\. Maybe if he was below 18, you’d have to go through all sorts of legal shit, maybe even foster care training. It won’t need anything but a court notification, in this situation, and… his agreement.”

The boy nods automatically. I almost roll my eyes with his enthusiasm. He knows nothing about me, aside the fact that I’m not interested in hurting anyone. Even then, that may not be entirely true. To me, it is, but no one ever really knows, when it comes to people. Humans are too complex.

“Well, that’s one problem down. We’ll have to look at a long-term, later. Levi, are you sure you can finance this kind of thing?”

“I can.”

I know I can – I don’t exactly spend much money, and I make decent. If I don’t, I can always start up another job.

This time, when I look at the brunette boy, a little of that fear is gone, a little of that sadness. For once, I wonder if he can feel that hope, the kind I felt when I started training to be a dispatcher.

Right now, he needs that brand of hope.


	4. My Vent Book

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> boom, a chapter in Eren's POV.   
> Magic.  
> *Jazz hands*
> 
> Sorry it's so short. Yell at me in the comments, and I'll give you memes, you filthy beautiful animals   
> I promise it will be longer?????? next chapter?????

My least favorite part about staying in the hospital for another five days is that they stick me at least fifteen more times. Needle after needle, tube of blood after tube of blood. I begin to get used to it – watching the blood fill the small clear pipe, drop by drop, is almost mesmerizing. It’s a reminder I’m still alive – even after all that has happened.

By next week, I’ve watched every rerun of CSI Miami and I’ve forgotten why I’m even here. The hospital has, miraculously, become a part of me – I can’t remember what home was like. For that, I’m glad.

Happiness is rare, these days. I wish mother was back, so she could fill me with it again.

Also, I know she would bring me food. Hospital food is as bad as she said it was, the mash potatoes too thin, the porkchops like wood in my mouth. I can’t stand it, so I begin buying my food from the snack machines. It’s funny, seeing people’s eyes follow me, bruises and all, to the machine just in the waiting room. I’m still wearing my hospital gown, so they must think me crazy for walking out so easily.

I’ve learned all the nurse’s names. I’ve learned my neighbors’ names – room 241 and room 239. Sandy from room 241, and Daniel from room 239. Daniel’s had surgery for an abscess in his lung, and the tube is still there, embedded into his back and between his visible ribs. Sandy was being tested to enter a shelter – he tested positive for latent tuberculosis, and he’s being treated. He doesn’t seem ill, and it’s odd to see the older man sitting on his bed, reading a book and perfectly fine.

When the day comes that it’s time for me to leave, the man shows up again. The dispatcher, as Officer Zoe had explained, was fine with me staying in his home until I could become financially stable. Father never let me outside the house lest it was for his benefit, to calm the suspicion my friends held so they wouldn’t report him, so I never had a job.

I always wanted one. I would be away from _him_ , I’d be free to see something more than the same four walls of my room, even if it _is_ another four walls.

When I first saw the dispatcher, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d thought the officer was there to question me again, although she wasn’t in uniform. In a way, she was – she’d brought the dispatcher, though, and explained exactly what he had done for me. He was the voice I heard.

The voice was my angel, it seemed – a redemption, a savior, a lifeline. Every moment he was there, in the speaker of that phone, I knew I wouldn’t die alone. I never wanted to die alone, because that’s what my mom endured. She never deserved that, and no one ever would. Loneliness is an awful thing, it consumes hearts and makes the world seem bleaker than it should, makes your mind an empty void.

His voice was calm and far too gentle, as it sounded like something that would never be that tender; I felt like any moment he would scold me for being such a wuss, but it never came. When the door came down, I hung up, and God, did I hate hanging up. It meant he was gone, and my father was there again, taking his place in that empty void.

That’s what it feels like now, seeing him standing there in that void, one of my bags over his shoulder and steel eyes watching me shakily gather the last two. I’d forgotten how weak I was. I haven’t had to be strong in a long time. Taking beatings on a daily basis stopped requiring strength when I stopped fighting back, and I stopped fighting back long ago. I almost drop a bag, but he’s the one to pick it up, seemingly agitated. I don’t want to anger him – he’s the only person here, anymore. The only person who will bother with me.

“You ready?”

I nod.

Readier than I’ve ever been.

The trip to the first floor isn’t too bad. We don’t talk through the hallway, and we don’t talk on the elevator. I feel bad, my mouth sealed like my heart, still exposed on the sleeve of the shirt Officer Zoe had bought me a day or two ago. I give the older man small sideways glances, trying to understand him.

A dispatcher. A hero, even. My hero.

I’m suddenly overwhelmed with admiration, here on this mirrored elevator. He’s probably saved so many lives, and now he’s here, volunteering his home for me. I can’t imagine what brought him to do things like this, being so kind and loving towards people.

I bite my lip, and look away. Yesterday, my lip was bleeding. A nurse told me to stop biting it, but I keep doing it anyways – I can’t help it. I spot myself in a mirror along the left wall.

I’m not as pale as I was when I first got put in the hospital. I’m warming, almost like summer – my skin looks a little less sickly, and my bruises are fading slowly but surely, like I’d bleached away my past. Officer Zoe’s outfit settles a little too big on me, though. The shirt reaches halfway down my thighs, the jeans are almost too tight on my thighs. She’d made the mistake of shopping in the men’s section – it seems like something she would do.

I don’t think she understands that I’m not masculine in the slightest. Axe smells bad, men’s clothes looks bad, male musk is disgusting, and sports are annoying. I’ve never been the boyish type.

The ride down was too long, but at last the elevator dings, and the doors slide open with a mechanical hiss of metal against metal.

It feels like I’m crossing a line, into a new world, when I step outside the hospital.

It feels like a new beginning, and it’s something I’d never imagined I would have.

 

 

 

 

 

The car ride was awkward, but the thoughts in my head blocked it out for the most part. I sat curled up, arms around my stomach and face turned to the window, watching a world I’d never seen before. Maybe before I was 18, once or twice on the bus, but never like this. Levi’s apartment is far from my house, my old house. Dad’s house, I guess. It’s on the opposite side of the hospital from the direction of father’s, towards the next county over. The nicer county, aside from the city.

At the apartment, he helps me haul all my stuff, and when I fuck up and drop another bag, he makes a soft puff and grabs all the bags. He makes me look like a weakling, easily carrying all four bags without hesitation or any sign of a struggle. I blush, likely in annoyance, but follow stiffly behind him anyways.

His apartment is nice, compared to home. Home. Why do I still call it home? It was beat into me, maybe. Or maybe it really is home, and I know that still, even after it’s long gone.

It’s open concept – immaculate carpets, pure white, and every surface perfectly perfect. I touch the coffee table while he disappears into a room, and when I lift my fingers, nothing is on them. I’m not used to that. I’d expect a dust or two, right?

“You coming, or not?”

I lift my head, but instead of falling on the door he’d entered, my gaze falls on the fireplace mantle.

Pictures. Not too many of them, not too few – he has a social life, compared to mine. A short, blonde woman, hazel eyes blazing bright, almost like gold, stands in one of them, tongue stuck out and arm hooked around the dispatcher’s neck. In another, a dark-haired woman. She looks like the dispatcher, same grey eyes and porcelain skin.  

There are other pictures, but those two stand out the most. The girl could be his girlfriend, and the woman could be his mother.

I swallow thickly, and finally move towards what I assume is the bedroom.

He had set all my stuff on the bed, which is a queen, and had already made a place for himself leaning against a black dresser. I stand awkwardly, wringing my fingers behind my back, hoping to God he won’t ask me anything too personal.

“This is going to be where you sleep.”

“This is a one-room apartment, right?” I prod, wanting to know that I’m not making his life any harder than it was before. He rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but the couch folds. Don’t feel bad. It’s not like the bed is that important to me, anyways – I don’t sleep much.”

The room is bland, too. I peer around, at the empty turquoise walls, the simple white carpeting, the single black dresser. I have an urge to make it nicer, maybe put up a few pictures, of my own making. I rock on my heels, thoughtful of to where all of his stuff is. Does he always have such little personality?

“If… it makes you feel uncomfortable, sleeping in my room, then you can sleep in the living room.”  A little bit of that socially confused behavior I’d seen from our first meeting peeks out, like an ugly scar beneath a white dress shirt. I smile politely, making sure he can see my sincerity in it.

“No. I’m fine. As long as you’re okay with it.”

He nods once. For a moment, I wonder if he’ll ever leave – he hovers, as if he’s afraid he may be missing something that comes with accepting a roommate, but with a few moments of hesitation he finally drifts away, seeming to accept that he can’t do anything more.

I don’t know what to do, at first. There’s nothing – aside from unpack everything I’d gathered at the hospital, what Officer Zoe had brought me. Hygiene supplies, a few outfits, and the journals and my paints she’d brought for me from the ‘crime scene’. Which is, unsurprisingly, my room. My phone was taken as evidence – there’d been a lot of conversation between me and Armin, about the whole issue, and my Dad texting some pretty shitty things when I’d been late from an outing with the friends my father is avoiding problems with.

So, I decide to start on that. I begin unzipping each bag, then tilting them and spilling all the contents onto the massive bed. Deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, a soap holder. It becomes a muscle movement, unpacking, until all I’m doing is scurrying about the room, depositing what needs to be where in where exactly. It lets me stop thinking about all the other things, the fact I’m living in a stranger’s apartment and everything I’ve ever known is gone, with my mom.

When the other three bags are done with, I’m left with my black duffelbag, filled with art supplies and journals, old sketchbooks I never finished before starting in another one. The first one, at the very top, is the book that had been my life saver for nearly three years. It’s a light blue book, bound flat, with light manilla pages. It’s ratty, with worn edges and permanent marker smudged along the edges and on the cover, along with the title I’d given it when I was only 16.

My Vent Book.

I inhale softly, happy to see it again. I’d had it forever – it’s the only thing that hasn’t entered the void just yet.

I flip it open, and see every tear smudge I’d made on it in the past, the old inks and black marker like sweet melodies for the eyes, each one sad and a reminder. A reminder that even if my situation is different, the situation was still provoked by something more painful.

The last page I’d written in was done a week ago, a day before I was put in the hospital. I skip by words, not wanting to see some of them, but some do stand out, like harsh cries to my eyes. Only I’d ever seen them so three dimensional – every word pops out, but some hurt more than others.

_I’m tired of these same four walls._

I flip the page.

 _He won’t stop screaming_. Each time my wrist flicks, pulling a page aside, I feel a little less hopeful. _Nothing changes. He keeps the light off because he says the angels are watching him. I want to die._

My breath catches at the last one, and I finally shut the book, just as I hear footsteps.

“I’m making Hamburger Helper. Do you want-“ I flash around, but dad isn’t there. Instead, it’s the dispatcher, confusion written all over his face. On mine, tears. His brows draw together as my fingers touch my cheek, pulling back like they did with the coffee table. But now, there’s something on them, and it’s wet. “any…?”

I breathe in, and wipe my tears away quickly, reorienting myself. He is a hero – he has problems, but he’s moved by them. He’s a stronger person. I can’t be the weak one.

“Yeah. Hospital food sucks.”


	5. Wet Sheets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had little time to work on this T__T sorry! If you see any errors, please tell me <3 
> 
> Thank you for reading!   
> (Title sounds like porn just to make you excited. I'm kidding, it's Eren's teen angst)

Something is very wrong.

Obviously something would be wrong – he’d been physically abused and emotionally abused for what the cops believe had been his entire childhood. That’d leave a lot of mental scarring, and I would know that kind of thing. Right now, he’s being tested for STD’s and all types of other things, because the PD is getting worried he was sexually abused too, because of his sexuality.

We learned, thanks to texts, that Eren was very, very gay. Which raises a lot of questions – was it psychological, or was it really how he feels?

To me, it wouldn’t matter if he was sexually abused or not. Him being gay is simply him being gay, and nothing had dictated that. No one should question his sexuality but himself, and even that is a need-to basis. And obviously he’s got no problem with his own orientation.

Aside that point, seeing the empty look in his eyes when I had come to ask him about dinner, the tears streaking down his face, made me uncomfortable and unsure. I didn’t know if it was because everything that had happened, or the book that was in his hands.

I wonder if it has anything to do with his mother. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe none of the tears had to do with his mother or the book, but because of where he is now, and how much pain he’s had to endure in the last few weeks, the last several years, even.

I try my best to ignore these thoughts, vouching to instead work on one of my many new responsibilities – feeding him. I doubt he knows how to cook, so I’ll probably need to start teaching him independent skills. My goal, at this point, is to make sure that when he gets his own apartment and moves away, he’ll be safe and know exactly what to do.

For now, I know he’s tired, so I don’t make him watch me cook. I make the mushy cheese shit, pour it in a bowl, and wipe my hands off on a towel. When I return to the room, he’s lying on my bed – now his – stomach first. I knock on the frame of the door, just enough to catch his already thinned attention.

“Food’s ready,” I say. I don’t need to say much more, because he rolls over and pushes himself out of the bed, sheets catching on him and trying to tug him back down.

At the table, he’s silent, as usual. A boy like him seems like he’d talk a lot, or at least have a lot to talk _about_ , but it seems my reading of him was inaccurate. He doesn’t eat enough, and leaves me at the table not even three minutes later.

I don’t know what to do, anymore. I’ve never had to deal with anyone like this.

Suddenly, I feel a pang of sympathy for foster parents. They must get so many kids like Eren, and never know how to help. I can’t imagine what he’d felt, even though I’d been beaten plenty in my childhood – he must have interpreted everything differently than I did. He’s a softer hearted person from what I can tell, and those kinds of hearts bruise easy.

At the same time, he shouldn’t be pouting so much. In a way it’s ridiculous. Eventually, he’ll have to continue with life, whether or not he had daddy issues. I had problems when I was younger, but nobody has ever seen me sulk around before. I’ve always paid attention to my own health, and eaten what I should have in order to survive.

I hear the shower running moments later, and it drags on. I want to go and bang on the door, tell him not to waste all my fucking hot water, but I know better. I’ll let him use it, but just for tonight – hot water isn’t that precious, I can easily heat some when I need to clean later. Twenty minutes pass, and finally the water shuts off.

I don’t bother going to his room to check on him, because I know he’s fine. Maybe crying again, maybe he’s writing in that book more. I can’t predict that kind of behavior.

Eventually, I _do_ have to clean, and sadly all the hot water is gone. I hate to clean with cold water, especially in the kitchen, so I warm up some in the microwave. I scrub restlessly until 11, an hour before midnight, then I pour the now cold water out.

I shower later than most people. Midnight showers are nicer than 5 am showers, so I tend to do those. I couldn’t imagine a cold shower so early in the morning, and I don’t see how Hange does it. The fucking psychopath.

What about her _isn’t_ crazy? Why did Erwin marry that woman?

When I’m done, it’s damn near 1 am, and I still don’t feel like sleeping. I pass by Eren’s room, and the door is shut, the light off – I automatically assume he’s sleeping, and that’s far better than knowing he’s not sleeping. If he wasn’t, I’d be even more concerned.

I unfold the couch, toss the sheets on top, and half-heartedly tuck in the edges. I find my laptop on the coffee table, and decide the least I could do is _try_ to sleep, even if I have to read a bunch of stupid science shit to help me.

2 am passes, and I’m buried in a pound of sheets, trying to sweat myself to sleep with a laptop in my lap and a page pulled up on how to sever a spine. I don’t know how I got on this page, but it’s interesting, and it’s almost comical knowing you can straight up rip a spine in half with just a knife and enough force. We all think we’re so invincible – I know better, because I’ve heard the screams of people dying nearly once every day.

I’ve just scrolled down to the last paragraph when a small moan comes from the door Eren is sleeping behind. At first, I’m afraid the kid’s started jerking in my room, but then I realize just how pained it had sounded. I perk up, sheets slipping on the floor.

“Eren?”

No answer. I set the laptop down on the edge of the fold-out bed and shove more sheets away, tumbling out of the sweaty mattress. I hate sweat, but sweating makes me sleep. I guess it’s the exhaustion that comes with it.

The next sound isn’t a moan, but a wail. A long, sad one – I hear sheets shuffle just beyond the door, frantic – my throat closes in, suddenly worried. I fear he may have hurt himself, either intentional or unintentional, but I also know he wouldn’t do that. Not now, when he may be closer to a happier life. My hand brushes the knob, frozen and brass, but when I try to turn it, it is locked.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Panting comes from behind the door, and a small sob – choked and painful-sounding. No, no, no – I’m not letting the kid die the first day he’s in my fucking apartment. I’m not _that_ stupid, and I refuse to let him think I’m stupid.

I run my hand along the top of the door frame, finding the toothpick I leave up there for just-in-case. I knew he’d be sleeping in my room, so there were quite a few precautions I put in place. I push the toothpick into the hole on the knob, and feel a small click. The door pops open easily, after that.

I’d expected blood, really. Maybe Eren’s already pale body, or a knife or even a bottle of pills. I take pills for anxiety and depression, so maybe he’d gotten to those? But instead, he’s in bed, sheets hanging off the bed and his entire body curled in on itself, tears soaking the pillow.

A nightmare. Just a nightmare.

I breathe a long, exhasperated sigh. Here I thought the kid was trying to kill himself, even that his _father_ had snuck in to finish the job, but no – he’s just crying over a stupid dream.

“Dad.”

I lift my gaze from the sheets on the floor, just as Eren twitches, eyelids fluttering. His face is twisted in fear, even in his sleep. It’s a painful thing to see, but I know Petra had seen it on me, once, too. I push the door open all the way, deftly closing it behind me to just a small wedge of light. His fingers clench on the pillowcase, and he makes another wail, although smaller and more pitiful, this time.

“Eren, wake up,” I move towards the bed, pushing a bag away with the side of my foot. He’s messy – no real surprise. A lot of depressed teens are. “Come on,”

When I sit on the bed, he jerks awake, nearly falling off the already huge bed. I grab him before I can, tugging him back in the center – sweaty fingers drag at my bare arms, and wide, emerald eyes flash around, pupils vast in the dark, like two dark voids. I let him cling, his nails digging deep into my skin.

“Shh,” I whisper, hearing his breaths and whimpers – he trembles in my grasp, but says nothing, as if none of this needs an explanation. It doesn’t. None of it ever did. “Calm,” I breathe. His heart is pounding against my own ribs, his legs tucked beneath him. I can almost hear every function of his body. It’s odd. One by one, his fingers loosen. I let him stay how he is, as he wishes – he can take as much time as he wants to let go. He doesn’t even _need_ to let go. Right now, he needs a pillar, and I’ll play that role.

“It’s okay.” I’ll say that as much as he wants. I know his fear. I know how it feels to wake up screaming, crying and sometimes even bleeding. Maybe not physically, but emotionally – it feels like being a wounded animal. His hair brushes against my nose, his lashes against my throat. His last finger loosens, and he finally lets go, curling his arms against his chest.

I don’t remember when he started crying, but he did. Long, choked sobs come from his trembling body, face still buried in my neck, holding himself together with his own hands. Hands don’t heal. I breathe out a small relieved sigh, hearing him cry. If he didn’t cry, I’d be even more concerned, but I’m relieved he’s releasing those pains he has. He needs to.

While he cries, I realize just how torn he is. He lost his life. Sure, he’s in a better place, but how long had he known all that had happened to him? Just how used to pain was he becoming? My own arms are still wrapped around him, both our bodies bent awkwardly in the moonlight, myself trying to comfort him and himself trying to pull his pieces into a neat pile. You can’t just _do_ that. Someone has to help you, when you’ve been broken that bad.

He cries for an hour. I know he’ll have a headache, later, and I should probably go get some pain medicine, but I steel myself to sit still and listen to the crying, using it as some reason I should stay. If I don’t hear it, then who will?

If a tree falls and no one hears it, did it ever fall?

When he stops crying, I pull the sheets back onto the bed and wrap them around his shaking body, flipping the pillow over so it won’t be so damn wet. I’ll wash all the sheets tomorrow – he’s soaked them, and it’s mostly from tears and sweat. Both will smell bad.

I let him rest, even when it may be a bigger hell than staying awake.

 


	6. Old Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a little longer than usual! I've become hella busy this past weekend, and with that, I'm actually getting a job. Woah, technology.  
> If I get the job, I may slow down some - I'll probably only be available later in the day, and sometimes I just don't feel like writing, so my chances of releasing a chapter once every other day will become twice as unlikely.   
> Oh! And I would like to thank you for the 100 kudos. It's a little late for me to thank you guys, but I'm very, very grateful! I didn't think this would be interesting to anyone else, but it's made me very happy that you've taken your time to read and kudos. 
> 
> <33 enjoy thou read, lovely humans
> 
> (The next chapter will probably be longer, what with Petra meeting Eren and all. And a surprise guest *wriggles eyebrows*)

The next morning, I am death once again, although this time in an entirely different way. The agitation that comes with a lack of sleep is borderline rage fits, in some, but what comes with my lack of sleep is the never ending black stares and angry glares.

Everyone always knows when I’m agitated, and even what kind of agitation it is – for example, I can bet my entire paycheck that Petra will ask me why I didn’t sleep last night even if I’d never mentioned anything about my mood or my sleeping habits.

In the morning, I have to push these kinds of things away. Firstly, I have to wash the sheets Eren had cried on.

I find out that he’d also pissed himself, too.

A part of me is disgusted, but I know the pain. He’s 19, but things like that will always follow you. Especially in your sleep. It’s not like I was a tough metal-skinned asshole through the PTSD that followed after my childhood. I pissed myself, I’d sobbed and had to receive help that no normal depressive kid would need.

I don’t mention it to Eren. He knows what he did, and he’d attempted to change the sheets on his own, but I’d refused to let him, saying that I don’t like how other people do it. I know he’s embarrassed already, and saying something would be the equivalent of telling a person with skin cancer they need better skin care regimen. He showers immediately when he wakes up, which makes me grateful. At least he knows when to bathe, otherwise I would have made him, and I don’t think that would have made him very comfortable.

I change the sheets, bathe, get dressed, and do many other things in the span of two hours, and it’s nearly 5 when I’m grabbing my laptop and pushing it into my bag, a phone between my cheek and shoulder telling Hange to check on Eren once during lunch today. She agreed happily – I can’t stand the idea of letting Eren stay here alone, because in a way we’re still strangers. Very intimate strangers.

I show up to work early, thirty minutes when I’m actually supposed to be there. Petra is fifteen minutes later than me, and everyone else is there when they are supposed to. Erd is out for a few days because of a family issue, but that’s the only thing out of the ordinary.

I’m booting up the computer just when Petra is suddenly behind me, leaning to set a cup of coffee on my desk. She smiles, like the sweet angel she is.

“You’re tired. Why didn’t you sleep last night?”

Of course. I get to keep my paycheck. Suck it, you greedy fuckers.

I log in, then shift to grab my headset, settled on the PC. Petra leans against the desk just beside my keyboard, bronze eyes raking over my flying fingers. I cringe a little, knowing she’s waiting for an answer – any answer at all.

“You know the kid that called last time I was in?” She nods, slurping on her own cup of coffee. She hums, awaiting some sort of sucky ‘I’m still in the three day despair’ response, but she won’t be getting that. “Hange got me to see him. He had nowhere to go – no experience, no family, nothing. So he’s rooming with me.”

“Oh?”

I sigh. She’s going to turn it into something. She knows I’m not a dating type of person, but she also knows I’m unbearable lonely most of the time. I prefer quiet to Petra’s high pitch squeals, so I give her a small scolding look. “No, I’m not going to take advantage of his suffering and try to be his magical problem-solving boyfriend, Petra.”

“But-“

“He’s traumatized, Petra. He pissed himself last night from a fucking nightmare. What the Hell am I supposed to do?” She looks away, to her feet – I hate that I sounded agitated, but it’s what I am, right now, and I can’t help it. Her lip slips between her teeth, and the gnawing begins. I hate when she does that.

“I know it brings back a lot.”

She’s right. It does. I’d almost forgotten everything – well, not really. Trauma is never forgotten. But I’d almost forgotten the feelings that came with it. I was almost Levi – not _sexually abused_ Levi. People could almost forget that I’d been in a place like that, but now I’m housing a mentally fucked kid and he might as well be the twin of my past.

I don’t say much more, though, because I can’t find the words to describe how frustrating it is. I’d covered it up at first, this whole _uncomfortable mess_ , but now I’m realizing how quickly it’s beginning to stress me out. I’m not supposed to get stressed – if I get stressed, I’m fucked up. I go back to old problems, to old mistakes, and old disorders.

“Levi, you’re doing a good thing,” Petra’s voice is soft and lovely, a sweet melody to hear. She’s always been comforting – she’s almost like a sister. “If it wasn’t for you, he may be somewhere he wouldn’t want to be. Instead, he has _you_ , and you are a good person. Regardless of what you may thing.”

I inhale, finally lifting my hand from the blank keys. I’d typed so much that I’d practically erased every letter. I spin in my chair to the shorter woman, and she pulls the straw from her mouth to grin again. “You’ll take good care of him. I know you will.”

It’s always been hard for me to say thank you. Right now, I’m finding it harder than usual, because all these stupid memories make me want to lock it up and throw it down a well somewhere in Africa. But I force the words out, even though they sound throaty and wrong to my head. “Thank you, Petra. Really. But-“

Her line begins ringing. She frowns, her pink lips turned down at the tips. She’s pretty, even when she’s upset. She mouths to me, “we’ll finish this later”, just as she answers.

I watch her walk away, back to her station, and in my ears I can hear the mantra I’ve eaten for breakfast lunch and dinner my whole life – “911, where’s your emergency?”

I return to work, because there’s nothing more to do but what I’ve always done. I can always pretend everything is normal at work, because pain is a normal thing. People dying, people sobbing into their cellphones. But when it’s my problem, it’s too much.

Is that selfish?

 

 

 

 

By lunch break, I’ve already answered hundreds of calls. Like usual, some are useless and uninteresting, and I’ve already received a long line of very creative words. Others, however, I have to numb myself to. None cause pain, thankfully, but there is a small child who calls. 8. His mother is giving birth, and he didn’t know what to do – she couldn’t drive, as she was in labor already, and I ended up getting an ambulance down. The little boy was happy to have a little sister.

That’s all that I find noticeably interesting, that morning.

During lunch, I shut down my systems and let my calls be sent in to Olou, who’s vowed not to take a break until he’s taken 300 calls. It’ll take a while, but I’m sure he’ll get there – he always does. Petra follows, not even minutes later, and while I’m sitting in my car, she pops open the door and slides right in beside me.

“I wanna meet this kid.”

I tilt my head back against the seat. She knows I’m not going to tell her no, just give her the evil eye, but she’s immune to it. So I crank the car, and she plugs in her phone, charging it. Apparently she’d killed it throughout the day – I don’t know how, because I’d never seen her pick it up.

“Fine.”


	7. Collage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm beginning to slow down in updates, having a problem with writer's block so oops

I’m too tired to really do anything, but there’s nothing so glorious about doing nothing.

I’ll just overthink if I sit still for too long; what is there to loose, anyways?

Levi left me alone to go to work – which I assume is as a dispatcher – and I spend a good few minutes sleeping in, and when I can’t do it much longer, I revert to the same daytime activities I had at home. I turn on the TV and put it on a music channel – alternative rock – and lay out a selection of magazines I found in a stack in the closet. Because it’s in the closet, I automatically assume it’s not needed or wanted.

I can only hope.

I’d kept rolled up paper with my books and art supplies, so I pull it free and return to the living room, where I lay it out, along with glue. Officer Hange had taken my scissors and razors, which she’d likely found when she was packing it with other items I’d requested, so I don’t really have any way to cut anything. I end up looking through the house, seeking out something sharp. Anything will do, really – however, I’d like something I could control easily.

At last, I find scissors in the kitchen in a drawer. I return to the living room and settle on the floor, overlooking my kingdom of colored paper and magazines, already spilled open and ready to be remade.

I used to do this a lot. I love art of all forms, so always venting out in an artbook becomes very tiring and boring. When dad wasn’t home, likely off at a bar or in a different state for out of town work, the entire living room would become my canvas. I’d pin art on walls, paint random things that would hold no interest otherwise, and create collages. I made some during the summer, and when school started back I would always let my art teacher sell them for me or simply let them be put in public art contests.

It feels different, doing it in another home, though. When I begin cutting, I feel odd, my fingers fumbling helplessly at slips of thin paper. Wide blue eyes, blonde hair textures, black and white words – they all looked wrong in this new light.

My face twists in disdain. I hate how easily all of these factors mess with my rhythm, but it’s not like I can control them.

It takes longer than usual to find a decent lighting. I turn down the brightness of the TV and shift around the papers, even going so far as to bring another lamp in the room. Eventually, one lamp turns into three, all plugged in around me.

I know I’ll probably get them all back into place before the dispatcher comes back, just like how it was with my father. I’d never been caught painting or drawing in the living room on these large canvases, but I’d always been afraid that I would be. One day. Maybe he’d break my fingers so I couldn’t draw or paint ever again.

But it’s worth the risks.

I’ve only filled a third of the page, making the dispatcher’s face from my mind’s eye, when the door’s knob begins to tremble and the sound of keys clanking comes from the other side. I shoot up, eyes wide.

But the dispatcher doesn’t enter – instead, it’s the officer.

“Hey there, kiddo!” I cringe a little with her high, happy voice. She sets a bag down, and pulls off her uniform’s jacket, draping it over her bag on the floor. She has to pause when she sees what I’ve been up to. Both of her brunette eyebrows shoot up, and her grin fades into an awkward twerked frown. “Oh?”

I push the scissors between my legs, hiding them in my lap, and make a light, faked grin.

“I was bored.”

“Ah. I know the feeling, kid,”

My shoulders slump as she makes three clean strides and crouches just before the canvas. “Do you always do things like this, or do you just do it in stranger’s homes?”

I bite my lip, fiddling with the orange top of the Elmer’s glue. Of course, I always do these kinds of things, and I’d thought no one would check on me to find out, but it seems I was very, very wrong. “I like collages.”

“I can see.” Her glasses glint when she smiles again, returning the light to her hazel eyes. “It looks like you’re making Levi, right?”

I nod, albeit hesitantly. I’d done a collage of my father before, but it was made of words and was in black in white. These words all described feelings I had – pain, suffering, terror, hatred. It was coping, then, too. Now, the art is made up of whatever I can find in color. For his eyes, I’d found a blue perfume commercial and decided to cut it up in shards. It makes his eyes look like broken diamond pieces.

“How was your first night?” She asks.

“Okay.”

It’s the most I have. I remember waking up last night, frightened and weeping like a sick pig, but I wasn’t scared he would hurt me, which is a plus. I didn’t fall asleep to breaking glass and drunken curses, just the soft sound of a keyboard tapping and his occasional sigh of frustration. I learned he doesn’t sleep well.

“That’s good,” she grins again. I wonder why she does that so much. I can look her in the eye and tell, easily, that she feels sympathy for me. I’m not here to be sympathized with. I just want to feel normal again, or for none of this to ever have happened in the first place. “I’m just here to check up on you. Have you been feeling fine?”

I bob my head once, squeezing the scissor’s handle. I’m not sure how she would feel about me having sharp objects. She doesn’t know that I had cut once or twice when I was 15, then stopped when I realized it didn’t help me feel any better, but something tells me she wouldn’t want me to have them if she _did_ know. I also know that my thoughts are purely paranoid.

“Do you want me to help?”

I hum in disapproval, two small sounds in the back of my throat. Her lips press together thoughtfully, before she finally stands. She takes another small glance at the canvas, straightening her white dress shirt.

“You want me to cook?”

I hum again, the same two noises. Her lips pull to the side, this time, and her brows lower.

“Do you want me to leave?”

I nod.

“Well, Levi wanted you to know that he’s coming back for lunch. I suggest you get this cleaned up if you don’t want him seeing it in… say…” she lifts her wrist, pulling back her sleeve, “the next thirty minutes.”

I jolt up, quick enough to make her flinch too.

“Alright then, kiddo. I’ll get going. And… don’t let Levi see you with scissors. He’s paranoid.”

For a moment, I’m confused as to how she knows I have scissors. It takes me a moment to understand that she could see I’d have needed scissors to get all the pieces out of the magazines in the first place. I watch her wink playfully at me, ruffling my hair before turning to yank up her bag and pull her jacket over her shoulder.

I almost hate to see the woman leave, but I know that she’ll probably be back again. She seems to be a good friend of the dispatcher’s.

She gives me a final goodbye, and leaves with all the flare of a police officer.

 

 

 

 

Eren is as I expected him to be, curled up on the couch with the cover from his bed. Petra had spent the entire ride talking about the things she’d want to ask him, how she’d say them, and when we get there, all of that is lost to the wind. She makes a small, high pitched “aw”, like a teenage boy sleeping is so absolutely wonderful. I roll my eyes as the blonde pokes at my shoulder, eyes wide with unmasked delight.

“See? He’s cute,”

I breathe a sigh. She’s acting like he’s my love interest, and he most certainly is _not_. If anything, he’s a mentally ill roommate with nowhere else to go, and it’s my job to get him somewhere better.

“Shut up.”

It seems I was the one who would make the mistake, because the moment the two words leave my mouth, Eren’s eyes flutter open and he shifts awkwardly, arms unfurling in a small stretch. He peers up at us, both still standing at the door. I’m unzipping my jacket, and Petra’s obviously fangirling, bouncing on her heels faintly. I feel like she’ll either try to get us together, or die trying. She’s the type to do that.

But if anyone knows what Eren needs, it’s most certainly himself. I can’t decide for him, and it’s not like that idea will ever be carried out. He’s only been here a day, and both Hange and Petra are nipping at my heels thinking it’ll make me step forward and look at him like a romantic quest. It seems they don’t understand how much stress it puts on people to push them into relationships when they’re obviously traumatized.

I watch as the boy sits up, bringing the sheets with him. I finally slip my jacket off and hang it on the doorknob, sleeves touching the floor.

“Hi there! My name’s-“

“Her name is Petra, and don’t encourage her.”

Eren warily looks between the two of us, then at the picture I have of us on the fireplace mantle. His face begins to heat up automatically.

“Girlfriend?”

Petra’s face is the next to turn red. She grins awkwardly, trying to put out the fire he’d already started.

“No. More like… sister.” His brows knit together in confusion, starting to look between the two of us. He takes a second to get that we’re not related by blood, just my heart.  “I work with Levi. We’ve been friends for five years, and I was there with him when you called.” The blonde clutches her hands together, lips pulling into a bitter smile.

“Oh,” Eren says. For some reason, he still seems as tired as he was when I left. I wonder if he’s just slept the entire time I was gone, and decided the couch was comfier. “My name’s Eren,”

It’s a step, and Petra knows it is. Her grin returns, no longer sour with old memories we’d all much rather forget. “It’s nice to meet you, Eren.”

Eren makes a shy smile of his own, so small it’s barely noticeable. I realize, with a painful thud in my heart, that his smiles are sweet and nice to look at, even if they are rare.

Petra’s gold eyes flick to the TV, appearing to be on a channel for alternative rock. I begin to blank out at this point, because she begins to ask about music, and I’ve never been a fan of any type of music in the first place. I know, immediately, that they hit it off, though, because Petra lights up a little when they begin their conversation. I drift off towards the kitchen, and start making something to eat.

The last thing I hear of their conversation is Petra’s shrill squeak of excitement, and Eren’s soft, angelic laugh.

I’m beginning to realize that I’m becoming more and more intent on knowing about Eren, and his tendencies. His laugh, his smile, what he dreams of.

The small magazine piece stuck to his forearm, and the scissors on the floor.


	8. I'm Still Sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyo slightly less writer-blocked than before~!  
> Yes, I've already started on SNK S2, and JESUS CHRIST, Levi is still BEAUTIFUL. Eren is significantly MORE beautiful, and my smol children have become handsome princes. Amaze, such.  
> Thank you for reading! <3

The night is fun, considering I’d expected much less. Based off of the dispatcher’s attitude, I would have thought he had little company, but I was wrong. His “sister” is kind and playful, with a complexion and attitude of an angel, and we both get along well. She loves the same type of music, which is amusing for all her appearance.

We connected easily, and she didn’t push me into speaking. She could speak plenty enough to fill the entire table – I have a feeling that’s why Levi and her are friends. He doesn’t seem the talkative type.

While we spoke, my eyes kept wandering over to the dispatcher. He’d gone into the open concept kitchen, and appeared to be making something to eat. He’s been too kind to me, and I’m still trying to figure out how to repay him entirely. Sure, I have the collage, but would he really want to know that I’ve traced his face into my brain? I’d be disturbed.

Sometimes, he’d curse under his breath. Curses from other people, especially frustrated curses, always frighten me if they’re too close, but the dispatcher doesn’t give that kind of vibe.

It’s nearly thirty minutes before he finishes, and Petra perks up with what he’s made. I’m not used to creatively made food, not unless it was my mother’s, and it’s been a while since I’ve had anything of her making, but the dispatcher seems to know what he’s doing.

“We’re already late to get back to the office, so I’m wrapping this up and we’ll eat it when we get back,” he says. Petra nods, pushing herself off the couch across from me.

I don’t want either of them to leave again. I’m afraid if they do, they’ll never come back, and I’ll rot away here. I don’t know what to do with myself already, after all the loneliness, so what could I do without him? Petra and the dispatcher wrap up the food together, and when they’re done, Levi is the one to set a plastic plate on the coffee table beside me.

It looks good. I’d never really seen it before, but it smells spicy. He gives me an awkward, nearly painful grin, and for all his effort I can’t help but smile back, arms over my stomach and fingers buried in my ill-fitting shirt.

“I’ll be back this evening. If anything bad happens, go to a neighbor and… you know. 911.”

Yeah, 911.

For a moment, I imagining him pushing back my hair and kissing my forehead like mom used to, but I realize too late that she’s dead, and so is everything about her. Instead of my brief fantasy, I watch the two gather up their things and leave. Petra gives me a last little hand-flutter of a wave before she pulls the door shut, and once again, I’m alone.

Normal.

Every moment I sit still is another moment I feel more and more useless, so to wave the feeling away I reach over and pick up the plate, examining what it may be.

Whatever it is, it seems very advanced. It smells amazing, too, like home. Home before my mom died, and when dad was out of town on business trips. I twist my wrist a little, looking over the plate, and a flutter catches the corner of my eyes.

There, along the inside of my arm, is a piece of Levi’s glass eyes.

 

 

 

 

I hate to leave the apartment again, but it’s for good reason. Who knows how many more lives I could save this afternoon?

As soon as we’re at the office, Petra and I are split off again, busying herself with phonecalls and other things, while I do the same. I fall into a rhythm like usual, and I forget to count how many calls I take. I estimate at least 200, and that’s not too many. In fact, that’s none at all. A suicide attempt, a man in the middle of a mall enduring cardiac arrest, and a mom with a violent child she can’t handle. Those are just three – there are much, much more.

I loose myself to the constant _where’s your emergency,_ and _can you tell me if he’s breathing? Can you perform CPR? Remain calm, ma’am._

I forget time, and end up staying well until 9. I’d never given Eren a specific time, but I had told him in the evening, so I can assume my time is up. I collect my stuff, say farewell to my coworkers, and promise to give Petra updates. She’s already grown attached to Eren, and that’s a good sign. She’s a good judge of character.

At home, Eren isn’t in the livingroom, and he isn’t in his room either. I begin panicking at that point – I check the kitchen again, then the bathroom. Nowhere. I end up calling Hange, but she hasn’t heard from him or seen him.

I’m grabbing my coat when Eren slips through the front door, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts. I nearly faint, then and there, like a terrified mother. What the _fuck_ was he thinking? It’s freezing fucking cold, and he’s going to go out in that, then he’s going to go out at _all_ , without saying a word to anyone.

“Where the fuck were you?”

It’s too harsh, and I know it is. He’d closed the door behind him, but when we make eye contact he backs up against it, eyes wide.

“S-Sorry-“

“Eren, there’s a crazy fucking man chasing you down. You can’t leave this apartment without someone there with you, okay?” I know he’s only been here two days, but he’s still my responsibility. I’d feel like shit for years if he upright disappeared. I’d be terrified his father had found him, dragged him to a basement somewhere, beat him to pulp. I begin imagining all the scenarios. I see blood on walls, blood on fingers. I can feel Eren’s bones crunch, and suddenly I’m there with him.

I was him.

“I…” his voice breaks a little, in that one sound he makes. I take a step near him, and he flinches. “S-Sorry.”

I inhale softly, and begin carding my fingers through my hair. The least I can do is be happy that he’s okay, and not dead somewhere. I can be happy that he isn’t beaten bloody and crying on a floor, scraping for the carpet like I was.

“Eren…”

He flinches again, just lightly. So lightly I can barely see it.

“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you, okay?”

He knows I won’t hurt him, I’m sure, but the reflex that comes with being abused all throughout childhood is strong. Everyone starts looking like that demon, everyone grows horns and a red tail and carries a pitchfork. To him, I might as well be his father when I’m angry.

I do what I always wished someone else would do for me. I take off my belt, and throw it on the couch. His eyes follow it – he’s been beaten that way before, too. I open my hands and keep them in front of me, showing I have no way to really hurt him but my hands. There are scars on my fists from old fights, but those are invisible compared to what they once were.

Slowly but surely, he loses the fear he’d held towards me, and allows me to come near him.

“Where were you?” I ask again. If he doesn’t want to say, I won’t push him anymore. He searches my face, green eyes as wide and doe-like as a deer.

“I went to see the neighbors.” Yeah. Of course. In the case of an emergency, he wouldn’t want to be in the dark about who to go to, would he? I sigh softly, and the sound doesn’t unnerve him the way I was afraid it would. Instead, he bows his head a little. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“It’s just… you did it so late. You could have waited.”

“There was this couple…”

I tilt my head. I know who he’s talking about – Annie and Mikasa. They’re the only noteworthy couple in this entire building. They moved in a few months ago, and are already entirely settled in. They both look stormy, much like me, but they can be sweet when they want to. Mikasa is training to become a Physical Trainer, and Annie is an athlete. Soccer.

“Yeah. Annie and Mikasa?”

“M-Mhm.”

“They kept you for a long time, didn’t they?”

He nods this time. I don’t need to know what they talked about. The two are lesbians, and Eren is gay, so I can imagine that it wasn’t what any normal boy would do when surrounded by fairly attractive women.

I finally move away from him, grabbing my stuff that I’d left on the floor and hanging it up. I leave my laptop on the couch, though. “Come on. You hungry?”

He shakes his head, tentatively following me into the living room.

“You sure?” I raise a brow. I wouldn’t be surprised if the couple had given him something – Mikasa can cook pretty good, too. She had a lot to learn from me, though – we’re both Ackerman, so she knew some recipes I knew, but that was as far as it went. He nods.

“Levi… are you mad at me?”

I lift my head from where I’m at, rummaging through all my stuff in my bag. He doesn’t look afraid anymore, but there’s still an underlying fear. I’d felt that way once. It’s hard, always being terrified that someone will snap any moment. I pause just to rake my fingers over my scalp again, that nervous tic I’d picked up when I was 20.

“No. It’s fine, I promise. I was just… afraid.” I hate being afraid. That feeling is ridiculous, and I don’t know why we were given it – level-headedness is better than freaking out, so it’s practically the one fuck-up of our anatomy.

He seems satisfied with this, uncrossing his arms and pulling on the hem of his t-shirt instead.

We don’t need to say anything else. We skip dinner for the night. My stomach feels odd, like the anxiety is still eating at my guts, and Eren doesn’t seem hungry at all. He ends up curling on the couch, writing in a small book. It’s nearly 11 at night when I’m preparing to lay down, already done scrubbing the kitchen and mopping. He’s still settled alone, book open but eyes shut, nestled against the arm of the couch.

I hover near, wondering if it’d be wrong to pick him up. He had a nightterror before, so who’s to say he won’t freak out if I pick him up?

I spot what’s in his journal. A brief glimpse tells me I should look away, but the words are unmistakable.

_I’m sorry, even now._

I finally scoop him up bridal, letting the book rest with pages open against his stomach. A hand furls against my chest, and his brows draw together, but he doesn’t struggle. I have to push the door open with my back, but I get it open anyways.

I hate to set him down.

He’s a silent sleeper, uncannily frail in the sheets. I wish he wouldn’t have to sleep in that, but I’m not crazy enough to change him. I’ll force him to shower and change in the morning. I gently pull the sheets over his body, and like an idiot, I push his hair back and kiss his forehead. Just once, because I know that’s what I’d want someone to do for me.

“Stop being sorry,” I whisper.

I hope he takes my advice, and at least hears it in his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess, in a way, that's a first kiss???


	9. Start from the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyo! <3 Back at it again eh
> 
> Anyways, this chapter is (fairly) familiar! Next week, I will be starting therapy for sexual abuse trauma and emotional abuse trauma, just like Eren (‘cept for the +physical abuse). ^^ Yaaay! I decided that, because I’m a little nervous about the therapy session, I should write what I hope it’ll be like. And I’m throwing that at Eren.
> 
> Thank you guys (so so so so so) much for reading, and for the 200 kudos(!!!) *scream*. Every comment I get makes me cry a lil’, and every kudos makes my heart so happy. ♥♥

After the incident, I contacted Hange.

First of all, I’m concerned there’s a lot of trauma involved. I can imagine – first, the violence. Violence is always a good spark for trauma, especially if it’s within the household. Secondly, the likelihood of sexual abuse is sky high, and because of that, he may be afraid of contact. I know that fear. When I was still a teenager, I was always carrying germex and demanding lots of room.

In the hospital, I even beat a kid up because he touched my shoulder in the lunch line on accident. I still remember the sight of blood on my hands, how much I _hated_ it. I’d been conditioned to sexual contact and fighting, even if I loathed the violence. It was all I knew how to do.

For Eren, it’s slightly different. He obviously has anger problems, but instead of breaking things like I did, he starts getting frustrated and holding it in. I hate that, too – holding it in means an outburst, and an outburst means he may have to get taken out of my apartment and put in a psych ward like I was.

Lastly, the emotional abuse makes it harder for him. He has problems with feeling inadequate, based off of how he keeps worrying if he did things wrong. I started teaching him how to clean, and he would keep asking if he was messing up. He can’t make eye contact for longer than five seconds, seems to lie about the most random things. The last thing, I can understand. When you spend most of your childhood knowing you’ll be punished for the truth just as much as the lie, you take the latter route, because at least you have a chance of being trusted.

It never works, so it becomes a cycle.

Hange gave me the best answer she could concoct in her head, and that just so happened to be therapy.

Yes, therapy.

I remember how much I despised therapy. That was mostly because I was put in Christian Services therapy, and I wasn’t necessarily Christian after everything I’d felt. I felt too much to think any God could feel more. I hated the cold waiting room, the wrinkled old woman that kept telling _look to God, child. Look to God._ God never looked at me, so why should I ever look to him?

I’m hoping it’ll be better for Eren. 20 years ago, therapy was much, much more different. Eren is 19 – and it’s the 21st century. People are a lot more open to things they weren’t before.

Hange sets up an appointment for the next week. The only problem was telling Eren – when I was first told I was going to therapy, the first thing I did was flip out and toss my plate. My foster mom called the police and I was arrested, saving me from the first therapy session – that was, until I was let out a week later.

However, telling Eren was a different experience. I wasn’t expecting him to be a psychopath, but I wasn’t expecting him to hum either. It was just a soft, void hum – there was no tilt in it indicating yes or no, just a simple “hm”.

I took that as a yes, and went on, business as usual.

The next week, I took the morning off and drove Eren to the Mental Health Center.

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t really sure how I felt about therapy. I knew I was hurting – I couldn’t lay in bed anymore without being afraid the door would fling open and my dad would be standing there, ready to bludgeon me with whatever he had on hand.

But then, if the door ever did open, it was Levi checking on me.

Levi has become more than a savior, over the last couple weeks. He takes care of me in a way no one ever did. That didn’t mean feeding me or clothing me. Yeah, he did spend part of his paycheck to get me clothes that actually fit, and didn’t bat an eye when I got clothes from both the women’s side and the men’s, but he taught me to take care of myself. Sure, I wouldn’t be able to handle being on my own _yet_ , but he’s bringing the idea up.

He taught me how to clean, how to cook actual food and not microwave everything, and now he’s teaching me how to control my emotions. I can’t count how many times he’s come into my room at night to calm me down after a nightterror, or how many times I’ve come inches to having a mental melt down because he said I did _one_ thing wrong and he was there, telling me to breathe in and let it settle for a second. _Just a second_ , he’d breathe, _no longer. You’re okay, right?_

And now, he’s sending me to therapy.

Without my permission, of course, he set up the appointment with Hange.

It wasn’t until next Tuesday morning that he’d take the morning off of work to drive me there.

In all reality, this place is nothing like I expected it to be. I was expecting maybe a pure white waiting room, mental hospital type, people scratching their arms from withdrawal or everyone to be dressed like nurses. Instead, the lady at the counter who asks my name is barely in her thirties, with an overly bright set of teeth and a wide grin. She doesn’t wear anything saying she may be a nurse, just a regular pair of jeans and a button down shirt.

My psychiatrist’s name is Erwin. I’m sure it’s the same man that visited me in the hospital the first night I was there and asked me if I was planning to hurt myself or anyone else. He asked me if I heard voices, too – I wonder if he believed me or not. Probably not, considering I was shaking and sobbing hysterically the entire first night. There was glass imbedded in my skin, and everything kept burning like fire.

When the nurses tried to take them out, I kicked one in the face.

They strapped me down, after that, because otherwise they couldn’t administer the medicine they needed to calm the pain and put me to sleep.

Now, I wonder if he remembers me. I can’t be that forgettable, right?

It seems I’m not, because soon a woman opens the door and calls my name. Every door past this one has a pass code.

They take my weight – 124lbs, my height – 5'7. My blood pressure is like any other teenage boy’s. At last, the woman leads me to a room, and inside, the tall man sits at his desk.

Yes, I certainly know him. Same overgrown eyebrows, blond hair arranged the same way, blue eyes calculating and yet comforting.

“Well, aren’t you a sight?” he says, in that  _same voice_.

I breathe a small sigh. Yeah, he definitely remembers me. The kid strapped to the hospital bed, covered in bruises and cuts. I cross my arms over my stomach as he motions to the three chairs in front of him, and I select the one farthest from him. He raises a brow at this.

“I don’t bite,”

“I don’t trust people with big eyebrows,” a lie, but a necessary one. I can’t tell him I feel uncomfortable knowing he’s seen me like that, or he’ll know how unguarded I am.

“How come?”

“I’m afraid they’ll eat me.”

The laugh he makes is baritone and more for my comfort than his amusement. It only lasts a moment, and when he’s done, he grins in a way that reminds me faintly of Hange. I notice the ring on his finger, a thick band of gold.

“Hange told me a lot about you, and she was right about you being… a special case.”

“Hange?”

“My wife,” he says, crossing his fingers and setting his palms across the table.

I choke on a small sound. Oh. So they’re married? I wonder, briefly, how a cop and a psychiatrist came to be. Did they meet at a coffee shop like some sort of chick flick, or did they fall in love over a psychotic patient? My lips bunch to the side, in that confused way they always do. I wish my facial expressions weren’t so obvious, unlike Levi.

“Enough about me. Mind telling me a little about how you got where you are now?”

“Again, I don’t trust big eyebrows.”

“Would it help if I shaved them off?”

I nod. He grins again, much to my disdain. I wish he would shave that mouth off, too.

“Well, Hange would hate me for that… she quite likes them,” he says, reaching up and stroking his left brow like it’s a cat. I snort, digging my nails into my ribs. “Tell you what, Eren. Aside from shaving my eyebrows off, what would help you to be more comfortable around me?”

I tilt my head.

No one’s ever really asked what would make me comfortable. Levi hasn’t – I mean, he has rules. He doesn’t need to ask, either, because he always seems to know what I need. Something about the way Erwin said it also means he’s being sincere.

“Forget about what happened at the hospital,” I say. He raises one of those thick, blond eyebrows.

“Deal.”

“I’m here because Levi made me.”

There it goes. It sounds rather stupid, especially since it’s coming from the kid that he’d met at a hospital strapped to a bed, but it’s the truth. My caretaker made me.

 _Caretaker_ , says the kid who’s begun imagining sleeping in the same bed with said caretaker.

“Ah… sounds like him. I don’t suppose you know why?” Erwin presses.

“I don’t,” I mumble, slightly annoyed.

He knows something about Levi that I don’t, and that’s pretty annoying. I hate living in a home with someone who keeps everything a secret. My dad was one of those people, and he only laid them out for me to see when he was drunk or angry. Or lonely. The last one hurt the worst.

“So, Eren, why did he send you here?”

Good question. I don’t even know entirely myself. I know I’m different, but it’s all I know – do they expect for me to change so suddenly, like clouds clearing up and bearing the sun? No, in my case, there never was a sun.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Eren, I already know a lot about your situation. All I ask is that you actively participate, and try to understand where we’re all coming from. You feel alone, right?” He uncrosses his fingers to grab a pen, flipping open a book. I hold my breath, knowing exactly what he plans to do. Examine me like an animal, pick apart my feelings like he can dissect them. I’m not some test subject.

“Yes.”

I do feel alone.

“Well, you’re not. That man in there?” he tilts his computer screen in my direction, just enough for me to see. He has access to the recorders just in the waiting room, monitoring everyone. The first thing my eyes fall on is Levi, sitting with his gaze trained to the door, waiting for me. There’s something about the way he appears, though. He’s wound tight – I can see the bunch of his shoulders, the way his eyebrows are drawn. Even from the vantage point just above him, at such an odd angle, I know he doesn’t like being in the therapist’s office. “He’s here for you.”

I look away.

“Levi’s been through a lot. You’re certainly not alone. My wife?”

He pauses, for a moment. “She’s been with you since she got the call that there was a boy being attacked by his own father.” He motions to the screen again. “What this man wants? He wants you to feel better. He knows how you feel, trust me, I was his therapist before, only six years ago. What I want? The exact same thing.”

I lower my eyes to my hands, where they’re still red from my shower. I know that people care about me, obviously, but I’m a selfish person. Right now, I’d like nothing more than to suffer a while longer. It’s all I know right now – all that’s truly comforting. If things change, who’s to say I’ll ever stay the same?

“So, Eren,” he begins again, voice gruff and demanding. “I want you to decide if you’ll talk to me and work out your problems like a man,” he glances at the screen, the same one where Levi sits, now running his fingers through his hair, “or if you’ll drag everyone down with you.”

That’s right.

If I don’t pull myself up, I’ll probably make matters worse around Levi’s apartment. Hange will start feeling like it’s her fault. Petra will feel bad about it all, too. My mom?

She’s a whole new story, but I have an inkling of how much it would have hurt her to let the same man who ruined her legs ruin her son, too. But really, in the end, what can I do?

“So, start from the beginning.”

He knows which one I’d choose – everyone does. This is all a game, and it feels like I’m just a piece. Levi, Petra, Hange, even my dad – we’re all little pieces. Do I want to play the game and get over what my dad set up for me, or do I want to knock the board over and cry about it?

“What if I can’t, though? What if I’m afraid he’ll come back?” He was never arrested. What if he comes back? I know he will – he never leaves without finishing the job. It’s not his way.

“Trust me, Levi won’t let that man within ten feet of his apartment.” I smile, just faintly. I don’t know much about Levi, aside from his job and his name, his few friends, but Erwin does. Maybe he isn’t a liar, like all psychiatrists are? “So, Eren?”

I take a deep breath, and level out my head. I have a feeling I’ll cry before this is all over, like a small child.

“It started when I was two.”


	10. Feel Me Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: Eren has a major panic attack in this chapter, and he does give a few details of extreme physical abuse. If you don't want to hear these specific details, it'll be underlined so you'll know to skim over those moments.

It’s a straight hour before the door opens again, and the same slender brunet boy I’ve begun to grow used to steps out, holding nothing but a card already crumbled in his left hand. He looks as if he’d spent the last hour crying, and I can imagine why.

My first therapy session had no crying, just yelling.

I should probably stop comparing him to how everything happened to me – every person is different, and every person takes things differently. The world would be boring, otherwise, and maybe I’d have to pay for damages in Erwin’s office.

He spots me, and smiles just so. I stand, stuffing my hands in my pockets. People looked at me odd the entire time I was here – I’m sure it has to do with the way I was bouncing my leg, or how my hands tremble. They’ve done that since I got put on the medicine that regulates my anxiety. I’d always thought it was calm my nerves, and it did, but it certainly didn’t in my hands.

Side by side, we leave, him clutching the piece of paper close to his body between his arms, almost like he’s holding himself together. I wonder what he cried about, why he couldn’t say it to me.

He doesn’t know anything about me, of course, aside from the fact that I work as a dispatcher and that I can cook certain foods. In the end, I’m a stranger to him, and in a way he’s a stranger to me. I know important details, but what about the small things? I don’t know his favorite color, or if he snores. I want to know some of the small things, and it’s confusing for someone who’s never cared about the small things. The big picture has always been my problem, so focusing on those little extras seems to help.

It’s easier to appreciate art when it’s seen standing five feet away, but zooming in on a single piece will show how it was made. I want to know how Eren was made, and how I can help it from hurting him worse than he’s already aching.

In the car, he pulls his seatbelt on and automatically begins his routine of staring out the window. He always does that – sometimes I wish he would talk to me. I wonder if he’s trying to avoid contact in the first place.

“How’d it go?” I ask, shifting gear and smoothly pulling out of the parking lot.

He doesn’t really answer, instead giving me an indirect hum. My hands tighten on the steering wheel. I hate to get frustrated, but I’ve got problems of my own – I handle them on my own time, and sometimes it’s hard. I’m having to learn that I’m here for Eren, too, not just myself. I can’t be a fucked kid anymore. I wasn’t before, but it’s easier understanding why everyone wanted me to grow up and move on now.

“Eyebrows… his eyebrows are massive,” he says, at long last.

I wasn’t expecting him to say anything more. But he’s right – they are huge. I smile to myself.

I’d begged Hange to at least pluck his fucking eyebrows, just to help him look a little less like a blond mammoth, but she claims to like them. Personally, I think she’s growing a science experiment in them. Or they _are_ the science experiment.

“They are,” I admit, albeit hesitantly. I’m glad to speak with him.

“He says… he used to be your therapist, too.”

I raise a brow. Yes, he did – he was my therapist for a good while, and he was a good therapist. He put me on the medicine I’m on now, and it hasn’t bothered me at all. I have problems, sometimes, but not as much as I used to. Used to, my anger was terrible and my hallucinations were pure murder.

I hum in acknowledgement of his observation. I can’t say yes or no, because he probably knows that it’s the truth anyways. Eyebrows is convincing, in truth and in lie.

“Levi…”

I give him a small glance. The morning light makes him look oddly beautiful – his skin was once pale and sickly, but it’s begun to grow a little warmer in shade, like sun-bathed sand. Eren is a desert, silent and unforgiving, easily stirred by wind.

“Why did you take me?”

I’d only looked at him for a moment, because I had to keep my eyes on the road, but I know now that his eyes are calculating, a cat cycling through whether it should trust its newly made friend or not. I’m hoping he’ll understand that I’m on his side.

“For a lot of reasons. I have the accommodations – and you needed somewhere to stay.  I couldn’t just… leave you,” When my mouth closes, I wonder if it was really what I should have said. Just because I could? I imagine he’d want some huge elaborate heart-warming story about brotherhood and kindness, but it’d be a lie. If it was any other person, maybe I wouldn’t have taken them. I wonder if that makes me selfish.

All humans are selfish in some way.

“Why not?” He prods.

I sigh. We pull up to a stop light, and I’m able to give the boy a moment of my full attention. His eyes are absurdly bright and green. There is no curiosity in them, like I would have imagined, but instead they are empty. Void.

He must have learned to hide those kinds of emotions. Me too, kid.

I wrack my cobwebbed brain for any idea of why I couldn’t leave him. There are many, but all of them involve how I felt once. I don’t want to be _that_ selfish.

“You and I are alike.”

“How so?”

I take a deep breath. We just are – you’re the personification of all the fears I used to have, all the days I was locked up inside myself. I’m not a life saver, I’m not anyone’s hero. I didn’t take Eren thinking I could fix him – I took him to give him the chance I never had.

“You really do ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” I muse softly. He quickly apologizes, and I tell him not to with a small hum. I’m getting tired of him apologizing for every little thing. I should teach him the “thank you” method, one day, but that’ll take practice, too.

The light turns green, and I can no longer look at him. Cars pull ahead of us on either side, and I realize that I’m utterly distracted by the boy.

“Eren,” I start again, this time less bold than before, “I… know what you’re feeling. Maybe not exactly like you, but… I’ve been through a few things, too. And I think you’ll be happy one day. I just want to be there to see it.”

A long silence passes between us, a net that seems to catch both of our voices. I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing – if it was too selfish, wanting to see that kind of thing from him. I clear my throat, fingers twitching on the wheel.

He doesn’t respond – not right away, anyways. He takes his sweet time, leaving me in that anxiety space in my head. He may be pissed at me, or think I’m lying – maybe I _am_ lying. What if everything I’ve ever done is just a lie?

“I want you to see that, too, Levi,” his voice is soft, nearly inaudible beneath the air conditioner. It’s almost a whisper, but I hear it. “Thank you. For being patient.”

My lips twitch this time.

It seems I don’t need to teach him the “thank you” technique. Not yet, anyways.

 

 

 

 

 

That same night, he has a panic attack at one in the morning.

I woke up to the sound of shattering glass, and a scream. It isn’t any _normal_ scream, no – it’s the same sound I’ve heard before, the type of scream you can’t believe came from your own throat. I don’t worry about the neighbors – I toss the sheets and run, knocking over my laptop from the edge of my bed. I’d left it on for the night, waiting for it to download something. I’m sure it’d finished long ago.

By the time I get to the room, he’s already on the floor, hands and knees shredded to pieces by a fallen lamp. It still flickers on the floor, casting occasional light over his tear streaked face as he sits back, hands trembling.

God. He’s a mess – he tries to wipe the tears and snot from his face, but instead blood smears across his forehead. I crouch beside him, taking his hands and turning them up, palms facing me. The lamp flickers and hums in response just beside us, reminding us that _it’s still here, it always was_. This was all just waiting to happen.

“Shit,” I curse. He blubbers something about hands and blood, _my nose hurts, my eye hurts_. I don’t know what he’s talking about, because when I look at him, there’s nothing wrong with his face aside from the streak of blood and the tears, the snot.

People who say _they look beautiful even when they’re crying_ has obviously not seen a person cry. There’s nothing beautiful about the pain on his face, the crumpled expression. He’s having an attack.

“Look at me,” I whisper. He shakes his head, even though he’s looking me dead in the eye – his green eyes are darkened by the reddened, swollen cheeks. “Fucking look at me, goddammit!”

He isn’t breathing right. He’s hyperventilating – his entire body shakes, and the noises he makes are like throttled breaths. I grab his face, even if my hands are now covered in his blood, and force him to watch me. Me, and only me. I breathe for him, showing him how to do it – in, out. In, out. Give it a moment, only a second.

“You see?” I say. He makes a sick, broken sob. “I’m not him, Eren. I’m not him, and he’s not here. The bastard is somewhere far away right now, and if he comes here, I’ll break every bone in his godforsaken body. I’ll use his bones as a fucking teacup, alright?”

“H-He’s… h-he’s in—“ he tries to make words, but he can’t form them right. Every time he tries, he just chokes more. I shush him, because I know how hard it is. I know where he is – he’s in his head, just like Kenny’s in mine.

“Eren… he’s not here. He’s not in you,” the way I say it is desperate, raspy from my sleep. I feel him shudder involuntarily – I can imagine he’s cold, considering he’s in nothing but a t-shirt. “He isn’t,”

How do I convince him? I can’t – that’s for him to learn on his own. The man he knew no longer exists, not to him. He’s not in control, Eren is. He can choose who he wants to be, and I can’t let that be a tormented kid like I was.

I rub my thumb over his cheek, still flushed red against my hand, not caring about all the bodily functions I’d surely just experienced getting all over my hand. I don’t care. He could shit on my hand for all I care, as long as he breathes.

And he does. He begins to copy how I breathe, inhaling the same air I inhale, exhaling it right back. I want to ask what he saw that terrified him so bad, but I won’t. I know better – he’ll tell me if he wants to, and I’m almost certain he doesn’t.

“S-Sorry. S-So… so… sorry,”

I shush him softly, and he seems to listen, because he no longer repeats that stupid apology I’ve begun to associate with everything he does. He shouldn’t apologize for hurting – if he’s bleeding on my carpet, I don’t fucking _care_ , I just want him to stop bleeding. Not for his sake, but mine.

“Feel… f-feel him everywhere,” he whispers, voice cracked like pressured ice.

“Feel me instead,” I rasp. If I look him directly in the eyes, I know I’ll seem straight forward – and I _am_. I won’t lie out my ass and say everything is okay, because obviously it fucking _isn’t_. If it was, we both wouldn’t be bleeding right now and my lamp wouldn’t be shattered across the fucking floor. More importantly, Eren wouldn’t be shattered across the fucking floor. “Feel me.”

“H-Hurts.”

“I won’t ever hurt you,” I promise. I won’t.

“His… his hands… h-he ripped my hair out, he broke my nose, he bruised both eyes and threatened to kill me if I told anyone and I don’t want to die I don’t I don’t I don’t-“ his words begin to blend together, word vomit but a necessary one. If there’s poison in you, sometimes the best way to get rid of it is to vomit it right back up. “I don’t want to die,”

“No, you don’t. You never do, Eren,”

He accepts this. Instead of vomiting more for me to listen to, he buries his face in my shirt, and lets out a wail.

I let him, because I know I would have wanted that, too.


	11. Heartbeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the romanticness has come for u

I thought I was okay – I did, but for what was probably a fraction of a second. After the therapy session, I began to see that maybe, _just maybe_ , I would be able to do something with myself, with or without my father standing at my back. I could be motivated by the talks I have with Erwin, or I could be motivated by the man I’m living with. He wouldn’t be too bad of a motivator, considering he’s here for me at all, when he could have left me with a shelter or a hospital.

Whether I like it or not, Levi has helped me in ways no one else has been able to. He took me from the home I was in, made it possible for me to live away from that horrible place, and also taught me things no one else ever did. No one had the time too, and my father was less interested in teaching me anything about life at all. To him, I may have been a punching bag, but to Levi, I was a blank slate.

I’ve always wanted to be a blank slate. I hate having feelings, sometimes. The only time I’m okay with having them around is when good things happen.

Good times very unlike what happened tonight. I wanted to be numb again, and it’s a relapse I’d never expected to fall into.

I don’t even entirely remember what happened. The memories always fade just after the incident, especially my midnight terrors, and it’s the same situation for now. One moment I was asleep, and the next I’m bleeding onto a bathroom floor, shaking so hard I can feel even my bones rattle. It’s not because I’m cold. There’s a kind of energy in my blood, and it’s not the good kind. It’s the kind that leaves you terrified for yourself, that makes people lash out and break things, just like my father.

I’m not him, he’s not in me, and I’ll never be anything like him.

Levi dragged me to the bathroom without my consent, and began the prolonged job of getting the porcelain out of my hands. I’m unsure of what time it is, or even what day it is, just that there’s another person nearby and they’re so very warm, almost as warm as the blood dripping from my hands.

He makes words, but they’re blurred out in my brain. My vision is fuzzed, like it always is after a severe panic attack. If I shake my head, it feels like there’s cotton in my brain, tickling the insides of my skull.

I’m breathing better again, thankfully. I had almost suffocated before, but thanks to Levi, I’d been able to calm myself down enough to inhale without bringing my tongue down my throat with it. If I look up, I can see shadows bunched like the shape of a body, and the hands that encase my own are made of white, milky flesh, soft against the splayed fingers of my own.

It doesn’t speak. I’m thankful for that.

Slowly, the world around me settles, and the memories are long gone. What was shadows before is my roommate, and what was my roommate is now my savior.

“You okay?” He lifts a brow at me, my left hand in his and blood smudged over his shirt. “You went dull there, for a moment.”

I decide not to respond. If I told him what I’d just seen, he’d think me crazy. The truth is, during anything I don’t want to endure, I tend to drift off. Everything doesn’t feel real anymore, more like some crazy fairytale that no one can understand but me.

I just nod, stupidly. I barely feel it when the metal of tweezers digs into my skin, pulling free white porcelain and causing more blood to gush.

I don’t know how to explain myself, either. I’d probably left a mess in his old room, and the sheets are probably destroyed. I’d hate myself a little more if he couldn’t just wash them and have them be fine again, but sadly, I know that’s probably not possible. There will always be stains.

My eyes drift down to my hand. It’s a grotesque sight – there’s slits of my skin pulled up, fresh blood pooling in the dip of my palm. It looks like he’d gotten out a good portion of the lamp glass, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wary of how much was left.

“Whatever you’re thinking, I’m sure it isn’t good,” he says, bent over my palm. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here. And I understand.”

Sure you understand. You happen to understand everything, don’t you? For once, I wish he wouldn’t say something like that – my pain is my own, and he shouldn’t try to claim it.

“What makes you think you understand?”

His work falters. The tweezers shift between his fingers, getting tight. I don’t dare move, because when he rips the next piece out, it hurts. But it’s dull – duller than how it should have been.

I know I’ve said the wrong thing. I always do, and it just so happens to be that this time I’d hit the wrong chord.

“Maybe I don’t understand, Eren, but…” But what? But at least you’re trying to understand? Who gives a shit? No one will anyways. I’ll die alone, just like I was born alone. “I’ve been through things too, yeah?”

“Bullshit,” I say, though my voice is quiet.

He tenses again. I should close my mouth before I get someone angry – how can someone who’s so afraid of yelling be such an asshole themselves?

“Why can’t you just accept that I’ve suffered before too? Are you trying to pity yourself?”

Yes, I am. I think I deserve a moment to pity myself. Doesn’t he know what kind of shit I’ve had to suck up in the past decade of my life? I’m tired of crying, and I’m sure he’s tired of _hearing_ me cry. I want to pity myself without having someone else put their problems on top of mine to see which one weighs more.

“Yes, I am! Yes, I’m trying to pity myself, because _no one else ever did!_ I’m having to cry for everyone else that never did for the last ten years of my life, where if I went to school no one shed a tear when they saw the bruises and no one mentioned my name even if I hadn’t been to school for a month because he’d broken every goddamn bone in my body!”

Did I say that? I could’ve sworn I didn’t have a voice anymore.

He makes a sharp intake of breath, not even waiting a moment to let it sink in.

“Why do you want people to pity you, Eren?”

“Because I’m not anything but a broken fucking toy.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am!” It’s getting too loud. I’m being too loud, and it won’t be long before I get slapped like I deserve. I should cut my own tongue off.

This time, he does pause. For a long, unsure moment, he’s silent, gripping the tweezers like he may break them if he wanted. I watch, stiff as a board, him push the tweezers aside, setting them on the counter directly beside my right hand, curled up into a fist on the counter.

The breath he makes is exasperated, long and drawn like a harp string.

“Eren, when I was five, my father sold me to slavery.”

I lift my gaze from the blood on my hand. He doesn’t look hurt by saying it – in fact, just the opposite. He’s calm, perfectly collected, like he’s stating what the weather is like outside. I know if I tried to say what I’ve always wanted to say, I would break down. I’m already broke down, and I haven’t said a word.

“My mother killed herself while I was in the room. My father didn’t want me, the only reason he kept me around was because _she_ wanted me there. Not even a week after she died, he sold me to some man on the streets and he took me to a warehouse,” he turns on the tap, washes his hands. He reaches to take mine, forcing me to run them beneath the lukewarm water. The water turns pink, draining until there’s no more blood left to taint the water.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Don’t be. I… can’t really say what kind of things happened there. When they found the boys that were kept there, though, it was broadcasted halfway around the world. I was the kid that bit a nurse and tried to murder my doctor. The psychiatrist? I told him to suck my nut,” he breathes a soft laugh after this. I can understand why that’d be amusing, considering his psychiatrist is Erwin and I’ve already met the man.

I tilt my head up, watching the way his brows draw together, like tasting something sour but trying to wipe the feeling away.

“I’m not able to have children because of those people,”

I almost apologize again, but I know he’s tired of me apologizing. I’m tired of feeling like I have to.

“That was 10 years in sex trafficking, Eren. I died when I was 5, and had to build myself on my own when I got let out. I didn’t know how to use a fork, or how to dress myself, because there _were_ no clothes down there. I didn’t know anything.”

He grabs a hand towel from beneath the sink and wets it, even squirting some of that strawberry kiwi handsoap on it. It smells amazing, and every time I come in here, I use a little of it. It’s made me want to wash my hands constantly. He brushes my bangs back between his fingers, tilting my head towards him so he can wipe the blood from my face.

He’s silent while he does it. I feel the intensity of the words he’d told me – who else knows? Does Petra know, or any of his coworkers? Hange? Or is it just me and Erwin? How could he keep that kind of monstrous feeling inside of him for 30 years of his godforsaken life, and not utter a word of it while I’m acting like such a stupid fucking brat, whining about having such a _horrible life_?

I wish he had told me sooner. Maybe I wouldn’t have acted so stupid towards him, or tried to push him down.

“You’re not a broken toy, because if you are, then so am I. You’re not what you think your father made you to be,” his voice is soft, his breath warm against my cheek. The remnants of fresh tears are washed away with the towel, and he flips it over, pressing it to my cheek and pausing there. “So, don’t tell me you’re broken. If you were broken, you’d already be dead.”

I make a soft, choked sound. Something like a sob, but also a little like a laughing breath.

“How do you know I’m not already dead?”

He grins a little, setting down the damp towel. For a moment, I think he’s going to say something ridiculous, like _because you’re still here_ , but instead he takes one of my carved up hands and presses it to his chest. I feel his heart beat, strong and persistent against my open palm. He’s warm, pushing that feeling into my own body.

“Because this. If you were dead, this would have stopped long ago. But it’s still going, right? Because you have hope. Even if you don’t feel it right now, because it’s so deep down in there, you’ll feel it one day.” He lets my hand go, only to pull me closer to the edge of the counter and press his ear to my chest. I jolt and almost push him away, but when I feel his soft, happy breath, I know that’d be stupid.

“Please don’t ever stop this heartbeat, Eren. If only so I can hear it the next day, and the day after that.”

My breath lodges itself in my already raw throat. It tastes like salty tears, but I can’t make it come out on its own.

What does he mean by that? Is it amusing, to hear my heartbeat, or is it just some pickup line? Does it make him happy?

Before I can ask, he leans away. I hate that he leaves me alone like this, but I can’t ask him to come back. _Come back_ , I want to whisper to him. I want him to press his face against my chest again and let me pull him close, keep him there for the rest of the night. But he leaves to find bandages.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, like he didn’t just awaken every part of me.

When he’s gone, likely to the kitchen, I reach and touch my heart again. I can still smell the strawberry and kiwi.


	12. Well this is gonna suck some nuts

*screaming in the distance*

(Game: take a shot every time I say group)

I KNOW I KNOW YOU WANT AN UPDATE;;; THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE OH GOD I'M SORRY

But! I would like to give all you a heads up pertaining to my situation.

As some of you know, I've been living in a group home, and said group home had recently been lost to a massive fire, resulting in the group home having to move into ANOTHER group home's cottage. So, this house all of us girls have been living in? It's borrowed. In other words, we're living off OTHER organizations. This sucks BAD, because literally just today the group home director found out that the group home we're borrowing a cottage from plans to move us out to start up another group of girls in. In other words, all of us? We have to move out before August 1st. 

So, sadly, this means I'm not going to be able to update often if I end up going to a placement without internet access/computer access. So, ultimately, there's two things that can happen:

1\. I can go live with my grandparents. If I go live with them, I will have a way to update and internet access (my phone, my laptop, and my PC). This will be hard to accomplish, because my grandparents are very anti-LGBT (they say I can't come home unless I admit I'm not into girls in any way whatsoever), and I've had problems with them in the past. Emotional abuse. My father lives with my grandparents as well, which means I'm probably in for returning to physical abuse, as well. 

2\. I can go to a mental hospital. Because of the scars on my wrists, I'm twice as likely to end up going to a long term hospital than any of the other girls here. It doesn't matter if they're a year old, it's still an option, because I have a past of self harm. Because CPS (child protective services) doesn't have many placements, they often have to result to this, and anything at all would be good for them to admit me to a hospital. 

3\. I could go to a foster home. This is really a hard suggestion, because foster homes are all different. My last foster homes had been fine, save for a handful. If I go to a foster home, I MAY or MAY NOT have a way to update. 

 

If it so happens that I end up in one of the placements where I can't update (mental hospital, or a foster home without internet access, for example), then I'm going to have to wait until I can continue writing. It may be weeks, or it could be months before I update again. Even years, if things turn out wrong. 

Anyways, I'd like to thank everyone for reading up to this point, if I don't update again. I'm really, really hoping that I'll be able to (I probably will), but I can't be entirely sure, and it's still important that I get that out. 

Thank you <333 for being <333 so fuckkin patient, you beautiful babes


	13. Promises Are...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyur lovurlies!
> 
> I'm going to be updating as much as possible until I leave to go wherever I'm going, so I can pamper u beautiful childuren before I (may) disappear. c: I may release the hiatus on Green Eyes so I can work hard on that one, too! Ahk, it'll keep my mind off of bad things. 
> 
> Thank you all for the support <333 You are beautiful and valid and kind and so important to me <3

That night, I made Eren go back to sleep. Less than an hour later, I was drifting on the precipice of sleep when I felt the bed dip in, and a body curl up on the other side of the bed. I knew who it was automatically, because it was too big to be my cat and he was nuzzled into my stomach beneath the sheets. Of course he wouldn’t sleep in his room – we’d cleaned it, replaced the sheets and everything, but apparently it still wasn’t enough.

For the entirety of the three hours I had left to sleep, I lay awake, listening to Eren’s soft breathing. He twitched occasionally, and shuddered from the cold. He was too afraid to pull the sheets, thinking I was asleep, but when he finally closed his eyes and his breath settled, I was the one to pull it free and toss it over his body.

I don’t know what to do. Honestly.

I don’t know how many times he’s shown to me just how broken he is on the inside, but it’s really starting to sink in. What kind of person wakes up so early in the morning screaming like that? Like they’re being torn apart from the inside?

I wrap him in the sheets, and pull him close. Captain’s purrs go abrupt when I shift away from him, letting Eren bury himself in my body. He does it unconsciously, arms curling beneath my armpits and face nuzzled into my collarbone. I’d made him clean himself up a little with a towel, and he still smells like Strawberries and Kiwi. I can even feel that precious heartbeat in his chest against my ribs, the breath rattling in his throat.

I can’t distinguish this feeling. I’m not sure if I feel romantic about the boy in my arms, or if I’m confused about everything. I don’t want to like Eren because he’s hurting and I can be his hero, I want to like Eren because he’s beautiful, smart, passionate, creative, loving, and many other things. Then again, when I was a teen, I had so many problems distinguishing between relationships. Someone I could fuck for a week could just be a friend of mine, someone I’d never even spoken to could be the love of my life, and so many other fucked thoughts.

Every moment I’m nearby Eren is like walking on eggshells. I’m not afraid he’ll snap or anything, of course not, but I feel like I may hurt him. It’s a terrifying feeling, and it’s almost like I’m falling. My stomach sinks, my shoulders hunch, and I’m suffering some sort of minor anxiety attack every time he says sorry.

I can’t just let myself believe I love Eren like that. I’m here to help him, I’m his roommate – all I’m supposed to do is get him on his feet and keep him out of reach of his father. If I can do that, then I’ve done my job. I’ve done my part as a good citizen.

The younger boy sighs softly, eyelashes fluttering in his sleep. I wonder what he’s dreaming of now?

I guess I won’t ever know for sure. I brush my fingers through his hair, carding it back, just enough so he tilts his head away from my chest.

I leave a kiss on his cheek, this time, too close to his lips.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

I wake up to the cold. This is entirely normal, but it hadn’t started out like this – originally, I’d been on Levi’s bed, enveloped in sheets and a comforter thicker than the one on my own bed. I don’t know what brought me to go for him, but I was so tired and distraught. Every time I tried to close my eyes, I’d be overcome with an overwhelming feeling that my father was looming over me, a baseball bat in one hand and a beer in the other.

So, not even an hour later, I pulled myself from the bed he’d made and I slid into his, trying not to bother him with my presence by leaving the sheets to him and staying on the farthest end.

I don’t know when, but the coldness faded, and he gripped me tight. It made me happy, like I belonged there.

But in the morning, things changed. I know it’s well into the afternoon, based off the light filtering from the windows, and a faint whispering comes from the kitchen. I recognize both voices – Levi, and the nasally chiming of Hange’s voice. I sit up, sheets falling from my shoulders, and peer around. I’m in the shirt I’d fallen asleep in, but that’s entirely it. I’m not sure if I should worry about putting on pants or not. In the end, I decide the least I could do is pull the sheets. I’m too lazy to go back to my room, so I’ll settle with draping the white sheets over my shoulders.

In the kitchen, Levi is leaned against the counter, fully dressed but still looking tired. A white, button down shirt, black jeans. I’m used to that particular style. Hange is in her uniform, gun holster and everything. Her badge glints because of the light, a golden twinkle in the corner of my vision.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Hange greets, as usual in her most exuberant voice possible. Levi hasn’t really looked at me, peering out the window that settles over the kitchen sink, sipping what I assume is either coffee or tea. Likely tea, considering he looks like he’s trying to calm down from something.

“Good morning, Officer Zoe,” I smile at her politely, pulling the sheets tighter around my body. She looks me over once, raising a brow.

“I saw that you and Levi here had a wonderful night,”

“Shut up, Hange. He couldn’t sleep alone. Don’t be a bitch about it,”

Hange humphed, undignified. She crossed her arms, copying Levi’s lean against the counter. It looks like he’d cleaned it all over again, like usual. He always does that after he asks me to clean, probably because I fucked up in some way. I wish I could help out more, or do something right for once, but it seems not.

“That’s not what I’m here about, anyways. Levi had to take the day off, because we got some special news…”

I settle on the seat of the bar counter, crossing my ankles together. She uncrosses her arms and moves to the opposite side of the bar, resting her palms against the marble counter top. She’d shifted quickly from playful to serious – her eyes hold a depth to them, like whatever she’s heard is something I couldn’t handle.

She’s probably right.

“Levi and you are going to have to stay on lockdown in this apartment for the next few days,”

“Why?” I ask, tilting my head.

Levi speaks next, which surprises me. He doesn’t seem like he really wants to talk, in the first place. “Your father was spotted at a gas station very close by. Not even two miles away,” he sets the cup of tea down, balling his fists beneath his armpits. He obviously isn’t too happy about this fact, and I’m not, either.

If my father is nearby, that means he never really left. But why? Why would he stick around?

Levi looks away again, not wanting to meet my eyes. Hange’s knuckles are white on the counter, her fingers bent tightly. She lowers her head, and finally sighs.

“Listen… we have reason to believe that he’s coming to finish the job. We don’t know why, just that you have something to say that he doesn’t _want_ said.”

I open my mouth, but quickly close it. What do I have to say that the police don’t already know? They groped me for this kind of information, and I know that Levi has wind of the kind of things that have happened to me too. I cross my arms too, but not for the same reason as Levi. Rather, I’d like to hold myself together.

_Not now. Not now. You can’t think about these things when people are around._

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Sadly, no. He disappeared without a trace. He’s a smart man – he knows when to change appearance, and he certainly knows when to change tags. He’s shaved his beard, and apparently dyed his hair, but we don’t know what color. It’s already changed twice, and we’d found the packaging in gas station bathrooms. He went to the house, expecting to find you there, but he was wrong.”

If I had stayed, I would have died.

I’m not sure what to say. How can I say the kind of doom I feel? Like having an anvil strung over your head, but you have no clue who has the scissors.

“Levi?” I whisper. He knew this, right?

“I didn’t know until now, brat. Don’t look at me like a beaten puppy,” I bite my lip and look down. He knows he’d said the wrong thing, and quickly tries to fix it. “No, no, don’t do that. It’ll be okay. I promise,”

“What if he comes here?” I ask. In reality, I’m asking how much time I’ve got left.

“You don’t have any contact with the outer world, aside from with your neighbors around here. And they know not to talk about you at all. But… if he somehow finds out where you are, Levi has training in a lot of different areas, and he has a way to defend himself,” she offered, lips drawn worriedly. “He could show you a few things, but I doubt it’d be too good for you, considering your size. Your father is… 300 pounds, at least, right?”

I don’t know. I don’t want to know. How much does Levi weigh? What is he going to do, anyways? I look at the older man with such fear, I’m sure that he knows how much I doubt him and his strength. Levi is lithe, of course, and toned, but he’s not necessarily the definition of a heavy weight champion.

“I…I—“ I’m going to die. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. My dad will march his way down here, he’ll bring a gun, he’ll shoot me, and then he’ll shoot Levi. He’ll hurt the one person I can even imagine caring about in any way. “I’m going to die.”

“Shut the fuck up, Eren,” Levi grunted, twisting the cup of tea on the counter by the rim. “You’re not going to die. If you die, then I’m dragging your stupid ass out of the grave.”

“Levi-“ Hange starts, knowing that he’s gone a little too far.

“You too, Hange. Eren isn’t going to die. Right?”

The woman sucks in a breath, unclenching her fingers. “You’re not. We’re going to arrest this guy and put him in prison for life. You’ll never see him again,”

I don’t know if I can really believe them. Levi moves from his spot at the counter, pouring out the rest of his tea and washing it out. He seems frustrated, scrubbing at the insides of the porcelain much harder than he probably should. Hange lowers her head, resting her forehead on her now clasped hands. Her ponytail flops onto her shoulder, sliding down until the tips of her hair brushes the counter.

“I need to get back,” she says at last. She lifts herself from the counter and reorients herself, examining the two of us over once each. She seems apprehensive, leaving us alone. “Levi, you have your pistol. Eren, if there’s anything odd going on, tell him. If someone knocks on the door, tell him. Levi will probably show you how to use the gun,” she gives Levi another glance. He bobs his head once, but doesn’t look up from the cup.

Neither of us watch the woman leave. If anything, we’re both too tired to even lift our eyes.

“It’ll be okay, bright eyes,” Levi whispers. I rest my cheek on the counter, breathing in the burning scent of lemon bleach. “I promise.”

Promises are just undulations of tongue, meant to dilute a pained heart.


	14. Titanium Angel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there!!! An update to my situation: I'm in a new house!!!! I didn't go back to my grandparents. I decided a group home was best, and now I'm at a group home. It's better than being screwed with a lot, so I chose to tough it out till I'm 18. 
> 
> Anyways, nobody worry about me!!! I'm officially on depression medication and I'm just doing what I can to get through life. Sorry if this is sad at the beginning. Thankfully,,, there's some romance!!! In this chap!!! They're finally admiTTING IT. GO D S THAT TOOK A WHILE HAHA
> 
> anyways enjoy!!! And pls comment it makes me cry with the joy and OML OVER 300 KUDOS IM DIE 
> 
> (I Wrote this on a shitty phone so it may be kind of bad but!!! I tried T3T. Tell me if there's something that needs to be fixed. Thank you <3 you guys make it worth it)

I'm not sure what to call the next few days, but it's somewhere between limbo and heaven. I'd been lonely before, when Levi was always gone, but now he's stuck here. Sure, for him it must be some form of Hell, but I'm just glad he's here. Sleeping and cutting paper all day isn't necessarily the best thing to do all day, especially when sharp things are tempting.

I wonder if he likes being here with me. The first day or two, we both seemed to do what we always did. On the third day, the amount of fidgety Levi usually displayed became more and more obvious. Sometimes, he'd wring his fingers and pace rooms, and eventually he put that into something else. Bleach. Lots and lots of bleach.

I knew before that he cleaned when I was sleeping, as every time I woke up the whole house would smell like a hospital and the floors would be wet in some places. But I'd never seen him clean, not like this.

He'd made me clean small things before, like the counters and the dishes, but I know he'd always go back over them the moment I wasn't awake. I began to assume he just didn't like dirty things, or was paranoid about it. It's kind of like how I don't like yelling or alcohol, because my dad practically encompassed those things. How had it been, in that dungeon of his? There were other people there, other children... and I know they didn't have bathrooms. Everything must have been filthy. He doesn't like being touched either, he'd told me before, but he seems to tough it out in public.

Sometimes, I want to ask about it. How many children were there? How many adults? Did they sleep on the floor? What did they eat? I know it's wrong to think so deeply on the subject, but pain has always drawn my attention. I guess because I became used to it - I began to connect with it.

If I asked, he'd probably get mad. I know he's in his thirties, and if that was a long time ago... then it must have healed over time, right? But honestly, can I see myself being healed in 15 years? Can I see myself happy?

No.

It's a harmful thing to imagine, but I can see myself being some drug addict, or maybe even dead. I can't see myself being a dad, or having friends, or... anything.

I don't think I'll have a future, sometimes. My own father took that away from me a very long time ago, and once that kind of thing is gone, you can't reach out for it ever again. It's officially nonexistent, a murmur of the echo you once believed lead you somewhere. In this dark, dark tunnel we all travel.

Levi himself traveled that tunnel himself. He's still cooking, he's still cleaning, he's still... standing. I don't know how. He's some sort of indestructible angel. And every day, he sits and listens to people cry and scream and beg. How can he do anything? I can barely sleep without waking up and being one of those many voices he hears, calling out for help.

_Burden._ Sometimes I can be a burden.

And yet, I still sit on this couch and continue to be said burden, watching said titanium angel pet his cat. I've never taken the time to look at how much he and his cat get along - it usually keeps out of the way until he's laying down, and then it pops up and begs for attention. I think it's quite cute.

"How long will we be stuck in here?" I ask. The older man rubs his fingers across the cat's nape, pulling the soft fur of it's scruff. The cat purrs, chest puffed out against it's master's, eyes nothing but small, pleased slits.

"Maybe until your father is arrested, maybe until we know he's gone for sure. There isn't much we can do but wait," he says, and the cat looks up, rubbing it's nose against Levi's cheek. "I'm hoping it won't be more than another week. I don't like being still,"

"I noticed,"

It's very evident. Every time he gets up, it's for no reason, or to clean something that doesn't even need cleaning. He's gotten up nearly six times in the last hour, and I've learned to just sit still and watch. My eyes follow the twitching of his fingers, marred red by an overuse of antibacterial soaps and bleach.

Sick. We're both still a little sick, and it's sad to know it took him so long to even get to this point. How long will it take me?

"Levi, do you sometimes wish things were easier?" The question pops out of me from nowhere. All this time he's seemed content, albeit a bit lonely, it seems like he wouldn't _want_ his life to change. I don't understand how he can do that.

He tilts his head back, exposing the pale white planes of his throat. My body tenses, realizing he's looking at me. His cat rests it's head between his shoulder and neck, claws sinking into his shirt to anchor himself there.

"I used to,"

"And? What about now?"

Stupid questions. I ask stupid questions.

"I've learned that hoping for things will get no one anywhere. We have to do what we need to to survive, and sometimes... sometimes those things become questionable in the future. But I'm okay where I am, and that's always been what I've wanted - to be okay."

Just okay? Don't you want to be happy? Don't you want to be one of those people who can look back and smile, instead of feeling... nothing. Absolutely nothing. I realize with dull finality that Levi isn't some normal person living a normal life - he dedicated himself to suffer through the kinds of things he'd always dealt with, for the sake of others. His life will never be entirely happy. I swallow a thick lump in my throat, settling down further into the couch. My fingers feel numb when I pull the blanket further over my legs.

"Do you want to just live? Is that it? Just... wake up to breathe the next day? That doesn't feel normal. It doesn't feel..."

"Happy?"

"Yeah."

Happy. That's all we humans ever want. We're all just small specks, scrabbling for that one chance that our lives will mean something. One word from one person, telling us that _it was worth it._ Sometimes you just wake up and ask yourself, "why am I still here?", and what makes you different from everyone else is how you answer that question. Because I want to be happy would be the normal response. Because I want to be with my family, because people rely on me, because God, because _her,_ because _him._

The day you wake up and say, "because I can't find a way out", is the day that your life has no meaning. It's the day you realize you're depressed.

"What is happy?" I whisper. What is _his_ happy?

He's silent for a moment. It's like he's asking himself, and he can't find the answer. It's like he's tired of asking it, even.

"Are you trying to make me a sap, Eren?"

I smile, but only faintly. Maybe I am - if telling someone what makes you happy is being sappy, then I'll make him the biggest sap on the planet. He makes a soft sigh, and gently lifts his cat from his shirt. It clings, upset to be kicked from his little cove of Levi's shoulder, and when he stalks away his head is lowered. Levi sits up, stretching out tired bones. He isn't too old, but he gives a vibe of being immortal.

"Happy can't be described in any simple way, Eren. Some people think it's smiles and laughter, but to me it's waking up on a bathroom floor at three in the morning after an entire night of wanting to die. Happy is the moment you get off the floor and wash your face, and look at yourself, and say: _you're still alive, even after all that."_

_"How?_ How can you be happy after something like that? Wanting to die?" My voice has an odd tremble in it with my last sentence. He cards long, thin fingers through his hair, breathing a soft chuckle. How is it funny?

"Because, Eren, it takes sadness to know what true happiness feels like."

My body stills, but just for a moment. I pull the blanket over myself and flop down onto my side, covering my face and curling up.

True happiness. How can someone who's been happy their whole life know the difference? How can someone who's seen nothing but care and love know what pain and suffering is? How can someone who's seen nothing but pain and suffering know what care and love is?

I hear a shift on the couch opposite of mine, and I hear him stand. Socks on wood, a soft _shh, shh, shh,_ and then he's gone. I feel my heart clench.

It's then that I realize I know what true happiness is, and it _isn't_ smiles. It's this moment, where I'm afraid and I think I'm alone, where I begin to understand exactly how I'll pull myself off the floor of this bathroom of mine.

_Levi, I'm sorry you felt like that. But I'll try to bring you a new kind of happiness._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It's the next day that I wake him up at nearly 2 in the morning. Usually it's him waking me up, but his little night terrors seem to be few between the weeks.. My hands are raw and they ache when I touch his shoulder and coax him out of bed. He does as I direct him, dressing quickly and meeting me just outside his room. It's obvious he didn't take his time to pick out what he'd put on - black jeans and white long sleeve that's completely covered in black cats. He looks like an idiot, but I don't care.

He doesn't ask where I'm bringing him. It's only in the car that he begins to slowly wake up, leaned against the window and watching green grass fly by. I'm bringing him outside the city, and it becomes more and more obvious with how sparse the buildings are becoming. Soon, there won't be a single home for miles.

An hour passes, and Eren still hasn't spoken. It looks like he'd closed his eyes, but I know he's awake. His eyelids twitch, and his lips are pulled into a small frown, like he's not enjoying what he's thinking of. I watch the rise and fall of his chest out of the corner of my eye.

He'd asked me what happiness was, and I wasn't entirely honest. I thought I'd fix that. I thought I'd show him what happiness was, but it wouldn't be simple. He's just a kid.

Eren is just a kid. I'd been through plenty his age, but... those were bad circumstances. What Eren had endured was nothing fun, and it was forced on him, too. He had to grow up fast.

Suddenly, I can imagine how everything had been for him. Did he have to sneak around when his father was home? How many times did he get hit, and how long did he bleed? If he was sexually abused like everyone believes he was, did it break him like it broke me? Did he forget his days, just watch that sun come up and go down? How often did he lay on that bathroom floor?

Beautiful. Eren is beautiful no matter how much he hurt. I won't imagine what he felt or how often he was hit. I won't imagine him on that bathroom floor, because it's personal to him. I'll let him tell me, and if I'm never good enough... then I'll hope he tells someone else.

It's been a 2 hour drive when I finally pull over. At 4:26 in the morning, the sun is already beginning to warm up the sky, making it soft and almost a bruised purple. Here, in the middle of nowhere, there's no fathers or uncles. It's just me, Eren, and whatever happiness we can find.

Eren's eyes split open, but only slightly. He looks tired, just like I usually do - he's the type who sleeps too much when he's depressed, so he always looks like he'd crawled out of bed moments before.

"Where are we?" He whispers.

"Biloxi, Mississippi. Shittiest beach in the south."

He grins at that. Mississippi _does_ have some pretty shit scenery. The south is so ruined that no one even really wants to deal with the natural side of it. I pop the lock and he slides out - the railing just before the beach glints with new morning, and the way it casts over his body... like an angel. A titanium angel. How could he endure everything he's endured? The same way I did, I guess. I slide out of the car and close the door, watching the boy step closer to the railing.

No matter how badly kept the beach is, it's still a beach. And a nice one. During the morning, especially during the winter, our sunrises can be so beautiful. Pink, orange, red. A contrast to the boy's cool green eyes.

"Why here?" He asks. It's a small breeze, a chilling one - the tide is low, lazily licking the gold sand. There are cans and balloons floating about in the water, likely from parties further down the beach, but it's still nice to look at. It's still nature, and it's still dead silent.

It's nicer during the morning. Once, when I was 22 and I was still figuring out my life after captivity, I quit my job and drove down here. I spent all I had left in my bank account renting a hotel for a month, smoking cigarettes and buying cans of soup. I'd sit on the beach all day and just listen and think.

That's another kind of happiness. The empty, the waiting... at some point in our lives, we come to a stand still, and nothing good or bad happens. We just wait. We listen to the waves and let them soothe us. That's one of my favorite types of happiness.

"Thought you'd want to see a little bit of that happiness I told you about,"

He turns, and smiles a little. He's so beautiful.

I'd asked myself if I felt romantic about Eren, and I keep getting this ache that tells me I am. I'm interested in this boy.

"You're a miracle, Levi," he says. He hoists himself over the bars, even with the obvious sign that says not too, and falls onto the sand below. I follow after, even though I'm not as much of a fucking idiot and use the damn stairs. I do as I did those years ago, and sit in the sand.

Eren hits the water quicker than a thirsty fish. His shirt comes off first, then his shoes, then he yanks his pants off, skipping on one socked foot all the way to the water. He nearly trips once or twice.

What is happiness? Sometimes it's waking up at two in the morning to freeze your ass off at the United State's worst known beach. But there's something raw about this happiness, something sure.

I'm thankful he can swim, or else I'd have felt awkward. He seems to even like being in the water - and honestly, I like watching him in it, too, so it works out both ways.

_Show me a different kind of happy_ _._

I shouldn't have sat so close to the water, though. He'd flop and splash, and I'd have to shield my face with my elbow. I snap at him, once or twice, to stop being such a dirty brat, but he sticks his tongue out. He frollicks like a damn fairy.

I wonder if he's ever been to a beach before. I wonder if his father brought him. He looks like a child discovering a fidget spinner, so I'm quite sure he hadn't, but the idea is sickening. Did his father once love him? Did his father once brought him to good places, and things got tiring, and he couldn't do it anymore?

I don't hate Eren's father. I hate what he did. People can become so sick they're blind, and sometimes I think that's what happened to Mr. Jaeger. I'd understand. It's so easy to be broken, these days.

"Levi! Come on!"

I lift my gaze from a shell.

"No. I'm not a kid,"

"Can you be one? Just for a second? Have to show you something!"

I roll my eyes. It didn't take much coaxing, much like waking him up this morning. Since he'd been so compliant, the least I could do is offer him the same courtesy. I lift myself from the sand and pull my shirt off. I'd been the smart albeit actually informed one and worn shorts. All I need to do is pull off my shoes, and I'm already at the shore of the ocean.

The boy breaks a broad, bright grin. He's only waist deep, preoccupied by something beneath the water. He'd been stuffing shells in his pockets, so it must have been something amazing to catch his attention.

"What is it?" I hate the water. I prefer being clean, and knowing I'm sitting in the piss of billions of fish, I'm kind of disturbed. But I brush it away for his sake, and once I'm at his side I realize what exactly he'd been so interested in.

Crab. A fucking crab.

"Reminds me of you!"

"Eren, I will personally rip your eyeballs out and shove them up your pathetic ass,"

"Look at it though!" He dips underneath the water, and after a moment of skittishly trying to find a place to grip the creature, lifted it out of the ocean. It seemed more interested in ripping Eren's eyeballs out that I was, so I'd give it a plus for that.

"Eren you're a disappointment,"

"No I'm not and you know it,"

Trust me, I do. I'm getting ready to leave him alone to frollick like a fairy again when he drops the crab and reaches out, grabbing my wrist. I jolt - I don't like being touched without permission.

"Wait-"

I wrench my wrist free and splash a gallon of water in his direction, which actually manages to topple him over. He struggles for a moment, but it's only when I rip him out of the water that he stands up sure, causing any living creature for a good few meters to scurry away. His eyes are wide - adorably furious, his hair a slick brown mess on his head. He keeps blinking, rubbing at his eyes. Revenge for calling me a crab. He huffs, but grins. Masochistic little fuck.

It's only seconds before we're both reoriented. He doesn't take the chance of splashing me back, as he knows I'd probably drown him. He just comes near, water sloshing around us both.

"Thank you."

The light-hearted teasing fades. There's something so serious about his gratefulness - two midnight ocean eyes stare up at me, and in them... there's such a gratitude. Like making him momentarily happy is some amazing feat. His father never brought him to the ocean like I did.

"Don't. I wanted to come, thought I'd bring you."

"Levi, do you think happiness and love can be the same thing?"

The question wrenches my attention like a dog on a leash. Love! The kid's talking about love.

I admit, I believe love exists. Petra and Olou, Hange and Erwin, and so many others you see nearly every day prove it. If love didn't exist, then surely they wouldn't be together, even if Hange sometimes hates that Erwin can be cynical and Petra sometimes hates Olou's teasing nature. Love can be pretty hard to believe in, though.

"Yeah. It can be,"

The teen has come too close. I feel my whole body go into lockdown, and my instincts begin telling me to reel back and hit the kid, but I know better. This isn't like being in my Hell, but it'll make it his Hell if I hit him. I'm not his dad.

The worst part is, I know I feel differently about Eren. He's not just some _kid,_ he's... special. He's important. When he thinks he's not being watched, he twirls a lock of brown between his fingers and smiles to himself, even if he's sad and hurt. And he thinks I haven't noticed the signs. He thinks I can't see that he cries when he reads that one book, or that he cuts little pieces of paper up and makes stories out of them. The paper on his arm, our small paper hearts.

"I hope I make you happy," he says at last.

He does. It's a giddy thing to feel - it makes parts of me warm, and it may be because I understand what he feels, or it could be that _he_ understands what I feel. And he doesn't cry for me, he looks up to me. He wants to be okay. We all do.

"I don't know what you make me feel," I breathe.

"We can figure it out."

 "It takes time," I remind him softly. Years. People can be too complex, and that's why divorces happen sometimes.

 Soft, warm fingers reach for me, but I don't push him away like I should. I let him touch my shoulder, trail up my nape, feel the prickly hair off my undercut. Gods, he's beautiful when he bites his lip like that, like he's some sort of confused pornstar. I'd fight whoever tried to steal that look.

 But then a couple shows up on the beach. And another car or two pulls up. It's 6 - we've been here for two hours, but it feels like three seconds. Not enough time. We didn't have enough time. 

"We need to go," he whispers. I'm realizing how close he is - the space between us is barely a small gap, and with my head lowered, we're barely an inch from really touching. I don't want to. Leaving now would mean waiting. 

"Yeah," is all I manage to say, though. If we dont leave now, my anxiety will spike and we'll both be equally as uncomfortable. 

So we hesitantly drag ourselves from the water, and begin tugging on our clothes. We rush to get them on, so they get fairly wet, but neither of us seem to care. 

What would have happened? What would we have done? I see the romantic interest I have for Eren, but physically... I don't think either of us can really think too hard on that. We have too much self preservation, and I know he'd end up afraid. 

 I open the car for him, and we drive back home, leaving footprints in the sand. Today, we chose to stand up and say, _I'm still alive, after all of that_ _._

 


	15. Sand and Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update: I'm in a good group home and I should be able to update a decent amount. Everything I update is from my phone so forgive the scrappy nature 
> 
> Enjoy!!!

What did I do? What the fuck am I?

You're a fucking mess, Levi. Everyone knows it.

All it took was a little pressure, and I was gone - I'm barely 25, and then they shoved me out into this world. What did they expect? I don't know how to take care of myself, for Christ's sake. I can't sleep, eat, work... even my therapist thinks I need to be drugged to even do anything mildly successful.

Mess. All these slutty boys making these messes. I want to rip my ears off. I don't want to hear these thoughts. I don't want to hear them. I smash my palm against the sand instead, sending plumes of tan in the air. Stupid. I quit my fucking job, broke up with Isabelle, tossed my phone in the ocean and disappeared. Even then, I still hear these thoughts. No matter how hard I tried to escape myself and the world I built up around me, they'll always be there. Having a girlfriend, a therapist and friends never helped anything.

They don't know who I am. They think they do. They haven't seen me at my worst. Erwin tries to believe he has. Crying for three minutes about one small incident doesn't necessarily qualify you as my closest friend.

And now, no one is my friend at all. I said no one knew me, but now I don't know them. I'm alone with these thoughts, and maybe that's better than letting everyone else watch me suffer with them.

Suffer.

I sit on the beach, and think.

I'm so utterly mad. So utterly terrified, my essence is built up of the concrete insides of a basement, and my brain is a cancerous disease, my tongue is it's weapon. I can barely speak anymore without seeming crazy. Without hurting someone.

The ocean doesn't hurt, though. She doesn't feel when I run my fingers through her hair, or when I hit her. It just splashes, and continues about as if I hadn't screamed and thrashed in her waters. Sometimes I wish I was as strong as her.

I watch her slush onto the coast, disrupting sand and sending it farther back. She was never trapped. The ocean is free.

I make a frustrated sigh, and bury my hands in my hair, hunching forward. Old, nasty tears grip my face so it feels like plastic, and my whole body aches from how I'd beat the shit out of my steering wheel. The soft skin along the side of my pinky and palm is entirely bruised. It aches, unlike the ocean.

Why do I do these things? I'm a mess, but even a scrap artist can do something with absolute garbage. What do you do with me? I clench my fists in my hair, my bruises throbbing endlessly. I can never go back. No one wants me there anyways. I can be faceless here. I can be nobody.

But then, a body plops onto the sand beside me.

I know who it is automatically. Erwin. The ass hole followed me.

"You called your boss an anal plug, quit, then what? Drove to fucking Biloxi? Got drunk off your ass?"

I make a bitter laugh. The bottle was empty long ago. I tilt my head to the glass peaking from the sand.

"I'm not drunk off my ass. I'm buzzed." Hange probably told him where I was - she always does. I'm on parole, I have to tell her everything. I may be depressed, but I don't want to be depressed in prison.

"Same thing. What the Hell happened?"

That's the funniest part. I don't fucking know. Everything was too loud. People are everywhere, people with emotions just like me. That's too much emotion. And then, that fat bastard who knew nothing about me started talking too, and it began to hurt. He started to look like people that aren't even free anymore. Demons.

"I don't know." I murmur. I shove more hair from my face and tilt my head back. Sand falls over my forehead from between my fingers, stars twinkling beyond each digit. Look at the world. It's just like the ocean - it feels nothing. The world feels nothing for anyone. It's only here to watch us live and die, live and die. Why are there only two options, anyways? Why should anyone have to chose life over death, or vice versa?

"Listen, Levi..."

I know that tone. He's been my official therapist for almost 7 years, he thinks he knows me. He thinks I am an easy person to comprehend, that my emotions are as subtle and useless as any other person's.

"It must be hard. I know that. But..."

"But you have to try? Because I'm tired of trying. It gets old once you fall on your ass a trillion times."

"Levi-"

"Don't give me that pitiful shit. I'm a grown man, right? What's the fucking point, Dr. Smith? Why the Hell do we all have to suffer?" The truth is, we're all put here to live and die alone. We're all just useless pieces of life, and whoever decided that life was so important anyways? It is just as simple as anything else. Just as powerless when everything is said and done.

In the end, we are all nothing. So why does it matter that I quit my stupid job, or I called my manager an anal plug? He's gonna die too. We all are.

"Why do you think we have to suffer?" He urges me softly. I hate eyebrows sometimes. He's so big and brawny, it's hard to imagine he's just a therapist. And he asks stupid fucking questions.

"I don't know anymore. We're all... fighting for nothing."

"You didn't get out of that basement just so you could sit around and whine."

"You don't know why I got out of the fucking basement! It's not something fucking cliche. I didn't get out so I could get married and have kids and fuck a thousand virgins in wherever, I got out 'cause I was scared I was gonna die. You don't have any right to say shit about that basement." I yank my hands out of my hair only to bury them in the cool sand, trying to calm my vibrating nerves. I've hit Erwin before, but it'd be stupid now. So what? So what if I'm stupid?

"You didn't want to die."

Yeah. So what. I have to be scared to want to live.

"That's why people suffer. Because if they didn't, they wouldn't reach out for the good things. Everything would be the same. We'd be dead before we were even born. Shells. Thoughtless."

I sit back. I make an annoyed huff. I hate that he always drags the conversation in a loop. 

"Then why do people kill themselves?"

"They forget there's something to be found, Levi. That's how you find happiness - reaching for something you love." Eyebrows crosses his legs, sand spotting his once pristine black dress pants. This old man came here for me.

"What if there is nothing?"

"Make something."

I frown. My hands have done nothing but destroy. I've done nothing but made people angry and frustrated, dragged good hearts down. Isabelle...

"Now you think about that," the taller man says, just as he begins to push himself from the ground. I peer up to watch him brush off his clothing. Sand sprinkles onto my black jeans, in my hair. I hate sand sometimes, because the ocean caresses it every night and I have no one. The ocean has a weakness. "I have to get home. It's late, and Hange's crazy about me being gone at night,"

I frown internally. Gross.

Before he leaves, he drops a folded up piece of paper in my lap - thick white, folded like a child had tried to make paper machete.

"Consider it."

Then he leaves, trudging back through the moonlit sand. It isn't long before I hear a car door close, and an engine start. I unfold the paper carefully, pulling on bent edges until it comes apart.

A woman stares up at me, her face set in an intense expression. Her fingers rest on a headset. Below her, in dark red ink, it proclaims "Dispatcher Training Available In Downtown Jackson, Milsap University".

Huh.

Make something.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  
_Present_

  
The ride home is quiet. He rests his damp head against the window, leaving a thin film of salt, water and sand. His green eyes fall between a continuous cycle of fluttering closed and wide open, watching the emerald hills roll by. Pink morning sun casts rays across his face, making him angelic and soft.

We're only just pulling into town when my phone rings, destroying the calm morning haze. When I reach for it, having to wriggle beneath my seatbelt, I'm suddenly remembering the time I'd tossed a phone in the ocean. Then, it wasn't funny. Now it is.

Caller ID is the first to warn me of the Hell I'm soon to find. Hange.

"Levi! Fuck, are you okay?"

I knew something was wrong the moment I slid my thumb across the screen. I make a worried expression, and Eren sits up in his seat, eyes bleary and serene with half-sleep.

"Yeah. We left, we had an emergency."

"There's a whole fucking Armada of police cars outside your apartment."

I go silent, my hand clenching hard around my phone. Somewhere in my head, I feel my brain pulse, the beginnings of a stress headache. Shit. Shit, shit, shit!

"What the Hell, Hange?"

"The neighbors heard banging and called 911, but when we got there the window was smashed and the front door was wide open. We assume It's a break and enter case, but there's nothing gone. Eren's whole room has been ransacked, though."

Eren. He's hiding something. Even I know a freak like Eren's dad has to have a motive to keep chasing after him. His job was supposed to be over - ruining the teen's life wasn't bad enough? Now he needs to terrorize him? No. Eren has something that his father doesn't want to be known. But I don't get it. He's already up for arrest - what's so bad about a past crime that he'll put himself in danger of being caught again to hide it?

It doesn't make sense.

"Do we drive down there?"

"No," Hange says. I can hear sirens in the call. "Police station."

"Got it," I murmur, and hang up. Out of the corner of my eye, Eren's eyes are wide and bewildered, filled with fears that I can't begin to understand.

He's hiding something. I'm going to find out exactly what.

 

  
"So, you finally decided to show up,"

Eren is curled up in a plastic chair, a blanket over his shoulders and a cup of coffee between his two hands. He is shaking hard - I was too afraid to tell him the apartment got broken into, so I let the police station do the talking. By the time we got here, he already knew what had happened.

I can't imagine how he feels. It's one thing to be terrorized a good portion of your childhood, but to finally escape it and have it chase you... his mind must be in overdrive.

Hange and I both feel bad for him - her brows are drawn together, and her lips are a tight, sorry line. We'd come as soon as possible.

"He must be pretty devastated."

"He is," I assure her. I stuff my hands in my pockets, sure that they're trembling just as hard as Eren's whole body. "What's the plan, four-eyes?"

The woman crosses her arms, leaned against the wall of a cubicle. There are other police officers around, but they don't seem to bother with us. Hange is the one with the case, after all. Others sit at desks, tapping away whatever police officers bother to type.

"Honestly, we're considering both of your safety at this point. Its obvious that Mr. Jaeger doesn't mind causing harm to a civilian or two to cover his tracks..." she runs thin pale fingers through her hair, pulled into a messy half-assed bun. She was in a hurry this morning - she got the call first, probably.

"So? What are we doing?"

"Well... I think you two could stake out at a friend's for a good week. We should have had a police officer stationed outside the apartment the first time, but we feared it would be a disruption to civilians. If you have nowhere else to go, there's also a shelter that's well maintained and seems to have two openings-"

"A shelter?" I butt in. I'd been to a shelter before. It's not a place I want to revisit for a long time.

She bites her lip, watching Eren. He finally looked up from his coffee, and It's pretty clear that he doesn't want to go to a shelter either. I sigh. We can't put him in a shelter. We can't.

"Got anyone you can call...? Erwin and I would take you... but there's no room..." Hange inquires, seemingly hopeful.

I nod. 


	16. Bird Bones

Eren and I sit at a round wooden table, myself staring down into a cup of tea and himself deep into an animated conversation about God knows what.

It's only been 8 hours since my apartment got broken into, and it didn't take too long to drive down there and grab what we need. By 6 in the evening, I was already at Hell on Earth.

Kuchel's house.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate her - she can be a good aunt, but it's the role she played in my childhood despair that puts her on my bad side. It took her years to even be able to talk to me.

She's a short, bird-boned woman, like most Ackerman women, sporting long, waist-length black hair. When I was very small, before mother died, I would get tangled simply playing with auntie's hair. She has the same eyes that I have, practically a twin of my mother.

Calling her had been a terror. I hadn't imagined I would ever request help from her again - asking anything of her makes me want to puke. But I had to. Eren and I both need a place to stay until this all blows over.

"That's quite unfortunate, isn't it, Levi?"

I peer up from my tea. Kuchel's twin molten silver eyes stare at me, seeming to expect a reply. I swallow, trying to find words. What were they talking about?

I choose to not answer, instead looking back down. I hate talking around her.

Eren clears his throat, arms crossed over the table and legs crossed beneath. I always wondered why he crossed his legs - isn't that a feminine thing?

"Well, I'm glad you two came anyways. I've been wanting to see my little nephew for years..."

I cringe. I don't hate her, but everything about her disgusts me. She's evil. She's cruel. She did those things to me.

"Levi?" Eren murmurs, nudging my shoulder lightly. I flinch. I hate this place so much. I finally look up, only to spot the excruciatingly worried expression on his beautiful face.

Beautiful? Since when have I called him beautiful?

"Sorry. Just lost in my head," I say, voice raw with uncertainty. His green eyes calculate my response for only a moment, and seems to find it satisfactory. He returns to talking to my aunt.

"Ms. Kuchel, you are Levi's mother's sister, right?"

Please don't bring my mother up. Please God.

"Yes, I was. She was a lovely woman." Kuchel takes a sip of her chamomile tea, taking far too long to set it down. Her hands tremor from old drugs. "I remember Levi used to brush her hair. He used to sleep on her belly when he was very small, and-"

When I set my cup down, it hits the table hard. I shove back my seat and stand stiffly.

"I'll... be right back."

I turn and leave. My whole body aches with memory - my mother. My mother this, my mother that - why can't everyone just accept she's dead? I don't need to be reminded of her. She's a fucking memory, and those are never good. I'm supposed to make my happiness, not leach off of past enjoyment.

In my old room, I sit on the bed and hold my head between shaking hands. I want to throw something, like I used to, but I can't loose that progress. No matter how far I've come in 10 years, I still can't escape the fact that I used to be bad. I used to be wrong. All these slutty boys--

"Levi?"

And then there was an angel.

I peer up between my hands, only to find Eren standing at the door, that worried expression only intensified by my small outburst. He looks cute, standing there in skinny jeans and a long shirt, almost reaching mid-thigh. I release a small, frustrated breath. All these slutty boys...

"Are you alright?" He asks, lip catching between his teeth. Our bags are bundled around me, ready to be unpacked, piles and piles of things we couldn't leave behind.

I slowly sit up.

"Yeah. Tired."

"It's your mom... isn't it?"

Yeah. It is. I don't have to say that for him to pad to the bed and settle beside me, crossing his long, thin legs. I return to burying my face in my hands. Soft, delicate fingers begin to rub up and down between my shoulder blades, firmly grounding me beside him. 

It's hard to imagine this boy called me so long ago begging for help. Now, I'm begging him.

"I'm sorry."

I am, too.

"Levi..."

I sit up again, and his fingers fall away. When I turn to him, there's something new in his face - something about his eyes, about his lips, about everything. I want to kiss Eren.

It's a dull, painful ache to ignore it. This feeling is so massive, and to keep it down is such a chore. I want, more than anything, to lean down and have my lips touch his. I'm sure they'd be so very soft. I'm sure he'd reach up, those same fingers curling to the back of my neck, and-

I know there's something intense in my gaze, because slowly his cheeks flush and he looks away, seeming to stutter in his confidence.

"Listen... I... I know you don't like it here. And I know you don't like her. So I'll do what I can to have my father arrested quickly, okay?"

Like, actually tell the investigators something worthwhile? His hands are nervous birds, fluttering between gripping fingers and cracking knuckles. He fidgets more than I do sometimes.

"Don't push yourself," I say flatly.

"You know I wont," he confirms. The grin he makes is adorable.

He's right. He doesn't like to say much about his life - he will do what he can to avoid certain things and factors involved in his abuse. But I hope he will tell me sometime.

Suddenly, a grim silence falls. It's sad to know that all of this started after one brief call. That one moment turned into a couple months, and maybe more. Eren may have escaped Hell, but he's only entered Limbo. I should be sorry for that.

The lingering silence between us is uncomfortable - we both have things we want to say and do, but we're sitting here in my aunt's house, hours after my life collapsed a little more. It won't be long before there's nothing left to break. I inhale softly, annoyed with myself. I could have prevented it. I don't know how exactly, but I know I could have.

Slowly, I lay back on the bed. I splay my left arm out but curl my other beneath my head, and soon Eren curls up against my side, resting his cheek on my bicep. I could say no - I could push him away, but I find myself enjoying his body heat and that small little breath I can feel against my arm.

"Everything I feel is so... big. I can't just be empty," Eren murmurs. I begin to lightly brush my fingers through his hair, still a mess of sea salt. He smells like the ocean in the spring.

"You don't want to be empty."

It's true. To be empty... it hurts more than bleeding. It's hollow and sore, but you can't stop it. You end up doing the same thing every day, living a life that doesn't feel real. You become dead.

I don't want Eren to die.

Gently, he begins to run his fingers over the front of my shirt thoughtfully. His green eyes stay trapped on my throat, those soft lashes rising and falling between thoughts. Beautiful.

"Fill me, then."

I snort. It's almost suggestive, but I know better - Eren isn't a person with a sexual nature, but an emotional one. His every feeling cones from his heart, none from his dick. I almost prefer it that way.

But I sit up anyways. Just slightly, so I can lean over the boy, so close that my hair tickles his eyelids and I can feel the warmth of his life.

I could do it. To lean down, touch Eren, breathe Eren, would be to promise him. I can't make promises about his happiness - I can't even make myself happy, for Christ's sake. I live in my own Limbo, my own emptiness.

But then those gentle, bird-wing fingers brush my cheek, emerald eyes gleaming so perfectly beneath me. He draws me closer, and my whole body freezes up.

All these slutty-

I pull away.

Eren's disappointment is evident the moment I'm sitting on the edge of the bed again, gripping my hair with shaky, angry fingers. This voice in my head, this reminder, I want to smash it. I want to rip it. I want to call it a buttplug and throw it in the ocean, like I have with everything else important.

"I'm twisted." I manage to force out through clenched teeth. It's my fault.

"No you're not, you're Levi."

"It's not a fucking joke!"

He freezes. I feel the weight of him on the bed suddenly like a ton, like he shouldn't be here. He's breaking me. Me, I'm supposed to be the titanium angel. I'm supposed to be his savior. I'm cruel and greedy and slutty.

I'm an angry monster, a ridiculed beast. I eat your children and Eren is my first victim, because his father never loved him anyways.

I suck in a breath. I'm not 15. I'm not what I once was.

When I look up, tears are streaking down Eren's beautiful titanium face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_16 years old_

I stand in an unfamiliar open room. Many tables are scattered about, all of them filled with blurry bodies and wide, fake grins. If you're here, you're either fucked up or your kid is. I know better than to believe those smiles.

A nurse touches my shoulder, dutifully pointing me in the direction of my visitor. It's been months since I got here, and not once has anyone come to even ask me where I'd been. No one knows who I am anymore.

I'm drugged up and dazed. Every step I take feels weightless, and my limbs feel like air. A high dosage of Lexapro never saved anyone. The first week I was on it I gazed dreamily at the ceiling every day, watching it float. Small dosages make you stare for a moment, large dosages make you feel dull and lifeless.

I remember the woman at the table. She is a porcelain doll, white hands perched in a lap of too thin bones. Her eyes are pools of glass, sharp enough to cut. When I sit down in front of her, I am sure it is my mother. But a new, chirped voice meets my ears. I'm so dizzy.

"Levi..."

Yes. Levi. That's my name.

"You look tired."

I know.

Kuchel used to be good. She used to symbolize, to my much smaller brain, good cooking and motherly hugs and kisses. She used to bop my nose and smile wide. When I was barely old enough to count to 100, she made me face over a thousand days of Hell. I couldn't forgive her.

Here in this hospital, forgiving is optional. We all sit around and talk about our feelings in useless groups, some of us so drugged we just spew whatever comes to mind. I'm not so drugged that I can't keep a hold on my mouth. If I say the wrong thing, I'll just stay longer.

Finally, her bird-beak opens and she says, "I'm sorry."

Kuchel is a bird. She was too small to say anything. Uncle would have hurt her. Uncle would have hurt us both.

My face crumples. I want to scream. I want to show out and have them inject me with every sleeping medicine known on the planet. My arm will ache forever, but I'll embrace the darkness. I'll run away.

"Liar." I whisper.

Does she know what happened to me? Does she know how often I laid in a puddle of my own fluids, choking and sobbing and sometimes even puking? My whole world lost meaning. My whole universe.

Kuchel represents pain. Uncle is gone - someone has to be blamed. And the bird watched from the windowsill.

"Levi-"

"Liar!" I snarl.

Everyone in the room stops and watches, a flock of even more stupid birds. Don't they see? They're all to blame. They watch. It's all they do.

"Levi, I could have done something. But your uncle. He..." would have hurt her. But what happened to me? What happened to me?

I stand, palms coming down hard on the plastic table. Bird bones tremble as she stares up beneath long lashes. Her eyes are wide and endless. Birds are bad. Birds lie when they sing to you, they make you feel safe, when the demon stands at your doorstep.

"You bitch! You selfish bitch!"

And the nurses stream in, like a flood of fake smiles and stupid printed uniforms. I shove my chair back. Visitors and visited all stand in unison, shying from the psycho. Shying from the demon on their doorstep. I want to feel that darkness again. Let them watch.

"Levi, calm down," A nurse coos softly, touching my arm lightly. I jerk my body away and growl at her. I'm sick of this place. What did she do? Did she cry when my uncle dragged me out of the house, sick from hunger and bloodied? Did she mourn me?

I turn on my heel and rip open the door to the visitation room, only to collapse just outside.


	17. Kaleidoscope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOrry i succ nutsz,,,, give me a reason to live and maybe i'll try harder hahah *cries*
> 
> anyways, sorry for the long wait. I'm in a stable home and all, I'm just having a hard time and uh? i guess i dunno anymore, i've just lost the intuition and all that i used to have. 
> 
> Enjoy! ALso, i love u all and ples don't be afraid to contact me via my tumblr if you need anything, or just want to talk. My tumblr is mentalprince and i post about sad stuff
> 
> (also yeah they kiss in this chapter, get ready my guys *fingerguns pathetically*)

I know I unnerved Eren to some extent, but at least he makes an effort to smile at me. It was a mistake - no matter how hard I tried to convince myself of this, it always seems to come up as some purposeful violent outburst. I didn’t mean to yell. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. It was all a mistake.

He left the room after the fact, and I stayed, deciding to sleep through dinner since I know Kuchel will be waiting for me. When I finally woke it was damn near one in the morning, and I was no longer alone. Eren had joined me in the bed, curled up against my side. 

Eren had developed a dependence on me, whether I liked it or not. Which I’m still debating if I do or don’t. Having Eren so near all the time is a plethora of feelings - some bad and some good - while having him near also leaves me unhinged. Those emotions never seem to come out right, and I always end up messing up or saying something I shouldn’t. Eren is the first person that truly bothered me - usually, I put on a mask and never let it break, but no matter how cliche’ it is, he seems to take it off for me. I’m supposed to not care. I’m supposed to be empty. 

But Eren’s warmth gives me a reason, and I can’t be empty then. I sigh, rolling in the sheets to bury my face in his neck, letting his sweet scent overwhelm me. He smells a little like Kuchel, and it bothers me, but I push it away in favor of seeking out the very essence of him. Not of the bird woman. 

When morning comes, I’m the first to wake, disturbed by dreams of ravens and angels. I roll out of bed, sitting on the edge to regain my composure. Morning light filters in through the window, an aura of gold dust on the floor. I disrupt it by lifting myself from the edge and stepping through it to the dresser, finding an unpacked shirt in the last drawer. Old, there’s a hole in the hem. I don’t much care. 

In the kitchen, Kuchel is cooking breakfast, her hair in a tight bun at the base of her skull. A stray hair dances at the side of her porcelain face, drawing my attention closer than I’d like. 

“Morning, kiddo,” she says with all the cheer of a drug-free woman. I snort, dropping into a seat at the table, leaning back in it until the back two are the only legs touching the wooden floor. The older woman appears to be cooking eggs, pouring them into a bowl and scraping the sides of the stainless steel pan. She looks tired from her profile, like most Ackermans. When she finishes and wipes her hands off on a towel, she leans against the counter across from me. I hate how she examines me, almost like she wants to understand.

I wouldn’t ever let her understand me. 

She tilts her head like an interested bird and touches her chin. “You feeling well? You practically ran away yesterday.” 

You could say I’m doing far better than I was last night. I’d beaten myself up over the whole fiasco since it’d happened, and it’s taking a toll on my mental state. But I don’t say this, instead vouching to look away and out the window, where my attention is more likely to be positive. Kuchel breathes a huffy sigh. I know she slumps more against the counter based on a small flicker of movement in the corner of my eyes, but I still don’t speak. 

“Levi,” she begins but stops. She can’t find what to say. 

She gives up when her eggs start to sizzle. I keep staring out the window, watching birds hop on branches, oblivious to the world around them. Kind of like Kuchel. “I know… you’re upset with me,” I lift my gaze. I am. I never stopped being upset with her. It’s been so long, and yet the grudge I keep is bitter still. 

She doesn’t say more for a long time until she’s finished scraping up remnants of butter and egg yolk from the bottom of the pan. She sets the spatula down and turns back towards me. 

“The truth is, Levi, I’ve been upset with myself, too.” You deserve it. 

“So?”

She releases a frustrated sigh, throwing her hands up defensively. 

“Don’t you see? It’s been years. I couldn’t have stopped Kenny. I know I couldn’t have. But I could have at least left you with the fact that someone cared, and wanted you to stay.” The look in her eyes is different from that timid bird I know her as — instead, there’s a fire — and it’s unsettling. Kuchel is a gentle person. “And I’m… sorry.”

A part of me knows I’m only being bitter because I need someone to be bitter towards. If I don’t have an outlet, who’s to say I won’t just spark and pop? I gather my anger into a tight bundle and compact it so I’ll sit still and not burst. She’s right; she should have said something, but instead she chose to sit by and let my uncle drag me out of the house by my hair. She was just as tightly compacted as I am now, and that was her downfall. 

I don’t answer her, though I know I should. She didn’t have to spare a word for my expense, but she did; that says a lot about her and even more about me for not responding. 

“That boy.”

I swallow, and cross my arms over the top of the table, trying to find another reason to ignore her, anywhere to look at aside from her. 

“You love him.”

I do. It was hard to admit at first, but I became comfortable with the idea. It was clear that we couldn’t just ignore feelings until we never saw each other again - Gods, he even crawls into bed with me when he’s lonely. Anyone could tell, and Kuchel isn’t an idiot, no matter how oblivious she can act at times. Kuchel steps from behind the counter, her bare feet sticking to a unmopped floor. She hasn’t changed. When she sits in the chair across from me, she does it as if she may break if she sits down too fast, or she may scare me away. She folds her hands in her lap, her knuckles popping with quick little thumb movements. 

“Is it true?” She prods. I nod, because I know if I tried to speak my voice would be too tired. She can’t see my vulnerabilities. “He’s been through a lot, that boy. All I ask is that… you don’t make the same mistake I did.”

I wouldn’t dare. 

With that, Eren stumbles into the kitchen, a sheet over his shoulders like usual. I take a deep breath, happy to have avoided the conversation. Kuchel provides a good morning, and the buzzing fear of confrontation disappears. 

 

 

 

Eren and Kuchel left at about noon to go grocery shopping, leaving me entirely alone in the house. At first, I was reluctant to let Eren leave without me, but I knew Kuchel was weak and needed help to carry a lot of things and he was likely better off having a little air than sitting around in the house all day. I agreed, but only if Kuchel brought her gun, and she did. In the end, it was a positive compromise - I got what I wanted, Eren’s safety, and Eren got to go outside for longer than five minutes.

The only problem was, Eren wasn’t near me. I know he’s upset with me to a point, but I still want his company. Without it, I feel endlessly bored - I would rather feel alive, right now, what with all the problems I’m having to sort through. 

The first two hours alone is spent cleaning. I scrub the entire house until my hands are red with bleach and my eyes water with the lemon scent. At last, I feel comfortable walking around in socks. That leaves me with only one last thing to do - finish unpacking. 

I start with my own stuff first and then move to Eren’s. I feel bad touching his stuff, but I also know he won’t do it himself. I start with his clothes, finding some of them are dirty and work down to one last bag. I lift it onto the bed, struggling with the sheer weight of it, and make a loud huff, ripping open the bag. What the fuck’s this kid carrying? Bricks?

Art supplies. Lots of them. I spill the contents onto the bed and begin to sift through them, hundreds of used brushes tinted at their ends and tubes of bright, colorful paints. Near the bottom, there’s a flattened roll of hard paper, the texture ridged with mod podge. I grip it by a flayed end and pull it out, more supplies clattering onto the floor. 

What I unroll it, what I see makes me breathe in sharply, hands tightening on the edges of the paper. 

It’s me - that much is clear. There’s something eerie and odd about the picture, and I realize it's not painted, but thousands of little pieces of paper, all fastened into a tight kaleidoscope of color, dull and almost soothing. I look tired. I realize, with faint surprise, that I am not flesh, but metal. 

I am Eren’s titanium angel. 

 

 

 

That night, Eren slept in the same bed as me once again. He’d only just showered, so when his flesh pressed against mine, warm and damp, I involuntarily pulled him closer. He gave a soft, pleased little hum and nuzzled into my neck, seeming to melt against me. I’m still unsure of what to call this. Every night we enter into the same routine, and every night we wake the same - isn’t that what a couple does?

I know even Eren isn’t sure of what we are, either. I’d told him those kinds of things take time, and yet I still wish desperately that we were more than roommates. That he was more than a friend or an acquaintance. I know Eren’s fears; I’ve watched him shake and cry and beg for something that would never come, and I’ve held him every single time. I’ve seen him smile, I’ve heard him yell, I’ve done  
. And yet I don’t know what to call him.

But there’s something so beautiful about him. Something I can’t ignore - if I tried, I’d be missing out. I know I don’t feel the way I do because he’s been through similar situations - at least by mild standards. Maybe I don’t need a reason why. 

“Levi?”

I open my eyes, tilting my head against my shoulder to liberate a soft breath. His green gaze is peering up at me beneath layers of lashes, gleaming with questions he doesn’t want to ask. 

“Yeah?” I groan, and roll over, leaving him to stay clung to my arm. He doesn’t let go. 

“You don’t think I hate you, do you?”

I was afraid at first that I’d pushed him away, but it’s clear from the way he crawled into my bed basically every night that he didn’t feel any ill intent towards me. I hum, my only way of saying no.

He sits up, that fine spot between his brows crumpling in thought. He looks better that way. When I open my mouth to speak, nothing comes out, so I result in snapping my jaw shut and huffing through my nose, nostrils flaring. 

“I’m sorry I raised my voice. I just have a hard time portraying emotions,” he should know that already, but it seems he doesn’t. Any idiot on the street could tell I’m a rather closed off person - I keep to myself and I keep everything simple, it’s my only way of making life easier. If I didn’t have a disinterested expression on all the time, maybe someone with bad intentions would approach me some day. Eren is the type to wear that smile with pride and let someone in. Someone like me. “You forgive me, right?”

“Of course I do. I shouldn’t have gotten so butthurt over it. Sometimes I just get scared, and I don’t know why.”

I get it. I hate that I do. 

He sits up more. 

““I want to say something, but I don’t know exactly how,” he says. 

“Try.”

I don’t expect him to toss a leg over my waist and settle on my stomach, nor do I expect him to lean down and lock lips with mine, hands planted on the mattress on either side of my head. I nearly jolt, but my fingers snap to his hips instead, anchoring him down so he won’t pull away. God, I didn’t expect this - he tastes so sweet, and it’s impossible to describe in the perfect way. I take control when it’s clear he’s unsure of what to do next, sitting up on my elbows and forcing the kiss to go deeper, swiping my tongue along his lower lip until he parts for me.

Eren is young. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing - he fumbles awkwardly in an attempt to press closer, and I reach out to grasp his wrists, forcing him to sit up and dragging myself up with it. I feel his eyelashes caress my cheek, those hips rocking forward to press himself harder into my lap. A passion rises in my throat - a need, a desire, I don’t care what it is anymore. I don’t want him to leave.  
His tongue slides against mine and I groan, only to have him pull away. His face is flushed and he’s panting softly, gripping hard onto my shirt. Does he know what I want from him? 

“I’m sorry,”

“Don’t be fucking sorry,” I growl. I’m sick of his little apologizes. I’m sick of hearing him beg for forgiveness when there’s nothing to forgive. “Eren, there’s nothing - nothing - that you did wrong.” 

“You don’t know that.”

He’s right, and that’s the most painful part. For all I know, his father is hunting him down because he has information he refuses to give to the police. Maybe he’s screwing me over for no reason. But whatever the reason, I’ll still try my best to find it in me to love him like I do now. “C’mere, brat,” I say, pulling him close and burying my nose in his shoulder. He slumps, and lets me collect him in my arms, putting his little pieces back together with mod podge and paper.


End file.
